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NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

1776-1850

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THE PROVIDENT! \L DETECTION

A Federalist Conception of the Thwarting of Jefferson

From an original engraving in the American Antiquarian Society

N EW ENGLAND

IN THE REPUBLIC

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1776-1850

BY

JAMES TRUSLOW ADAMS. LL. D., Litt. D.

Author of “The Founding of New England ” and
“Revolutionary New England , 1691-1JJ6”

With Illustrations

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BOSTON

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY

1926

COPYRIGHT, 1926, BY JAMES TRUSLOW ADAMS
All rights reserved

Published April, 1926

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS PUBLICATIONS
ARE PUBLISHED BY
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
IN ASSOCIATION WITH
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

1 601150

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PREFACE

The first volume of this series dealt with the earliest explora¬
tions and settlements and the life of the New England colonies
from the beginning until 1691. It was, as its title indicated,
the story of The Founding of New England. In the second
volume, Revolutionary New England , 1691-1776 , the narrative
was continued to cover the period between the dates named.
An attempt was made to trace the origin of grievances on the
part of the people at large, the rise of a radical party, and the
slow growth of revolutionary sentiment for many decades
before what is generally considered the revolutionary period
proper, that is, the decade of agitation from 1763 onward.
Apart from the imperial relations and quarrels of the time, we
tried to show how discontent steadily grew, how there came to
be an increasing self-consciousness on the part of the lower
classes, and how they gradually demanded more and more of
a share in the political power of their small commonwealths.

In what may be considered as more distinctively the period
of revolution in the sense of a crisis in the relations with Eng¬
land, the leaders of that movement found it both desirable and
necessary to influence popular sentiment by a propaganda
which stressed the rights of man and the sovereignty of the
people. It was a heady draught to hold to the lips of classes
who, owing to the frontier conditions under which to a great
extent they lived, had already advanced generations ahead
of their time in a fervent devotion to a philosophy of personal
independence and individualism.

In the present volume we try to follow the working-out of
the situation which resulted, during the remainder of the
period in which New England may be considered as having
been a distinct section. Our story closes with the year 1850,
for from that mid-point of the century the current of national¬
ism swept the New England states into the swift movement

VI

PREFACE

of what had by then become a genuinely national life. In a
sense, indeed, the United States is still made up of sections,
and New England, the South, the Middle West, and the Far
West retain certain sectional characteristics and interests,
but not in the same way that they possessed them in the earlier
half of the nineteenth century, when one and another were
urging secession on almost every pretext, and the national
bonds still rested but lightly upon them.

From the beginning of the present volume we have to deal
with a situation which is entirely different from that with
which we were concerned in the earlier two. During the
colonial period the New England colonies were to a great
extent independent states, in spite of their colonial status
within the empire. Their political relations to the mother
country and their own local political movements had an interest
and importance which after the Revolution attaches rather to
those of the new nation than to those of its component states.
The latter, although still considering themselves “sovereign”
in many respects, become rather administrative units, and
their local politics sink to a more provincial level. In a single
volume covering the period of this one it would be impossible
to give a continuous and intelligible account of the local po¬
litical life of six states, and it has not been considered essential
to attempt it. On the other hand, purely national political
events have been ruled out by the fact that this is the history
of a section and not of the nation.

We are, therefore, to a greater extent than in the preceding
volumes, concerned with the life of the people as expressed in
forms other than political. The main theme of the book may
be considered to be the continued struggle of the common man
to realize the doctrines of the Revolution in the life of the
community. We discuss politics in so far as he attempted to
realize his ideals in his political life, but the movement broad¬
ened steadily to embrace many other spheres of life as well.
Moreover, although our period includes two wars, we have
little to do with purely military events, as these not only belong
rather to national history but also took place — for the most
part — outside of the borders of our section.

PREFACE

Vll

In the first three chapters we consider the life of the people
during the Revolution and the economic and moral effects of
the war upon them. The structure of the governments under
which they lived is briefly traced, and we then proceed to
consider the unrest that grew out of the war conditions, cul¬
minating in the armed rebellion in Massachusetts. The for¬
mation of the Union and the adoption of the Federal Consti¬
tution are touched upon only in their local aspects, and we are
more concerned with the struggle which took place between the
forces of reaction and those which tended to maintain and
extend the doctrines which had been preached in 1776. The
leaders of the earlier period, having achieved their object in
securing independence from England, endeavored to stop the
revolutionary movement from proceeding further and altering
the relations of classes and the structure of society in America.
Such an alteration in their favor, however, was just what had
been preached to the common people in the war propaganda,
and for many decades after 1783 this struggle between these
two groups constitutes the main interest of our history. We
attempt to touch upon it briefly in all its various aspects — in
business, politics, religion, education, the relations between
capital and labor, and finally in the great question of slavery.
In dealing with such matters from decade to decade a certain
amount of repetition as to topics becomes inevitable. In spite
of this, it has been thought better to describe each period as it
passes rather than to treat each topic separately and contin¬
uously. Society was changing rapidly, and we cannot under¬
stand each period unless, as far as possible in a brief review, we
consider all its factors simultaneously. We try, therefore, to
picture the life of each successive period down to the great
outburst of humanitarianism and reform between 1830 and
1850. A secondary topic throughout is the gradual growth
of sectionalism, culminating at the time of the War of 1812,
and its subsequent decline until New England became gen¬
uinely merged in the Union in the slavery struggle of the Civil
War.

In writing this volume, as the other two, I owe a very
sincere debt of gratitude to Dr. Herbert Putnam and other

• • •

PREFACE

vi 11

members of the staff of the Library of Congress for in¬
numerable courtesies accorded me during work there in the
winters. Without the facilities there offered it would have
been impossible to complete the work without far more labor
and time than have been spent upon it in the past six years,
while the cordial hospitality extended to scholars makes all
work there a pleasure. I also wish to express my apprecia¬
tion of assistance given by Mr. Clarence S. Brigham of the
American Antiquarian Society, and by Miss Louisa Blake,
who searched some of the newspaper files in that library on
certain topics. The Widener Library at Harvard permitted
me to have a copy made of the manuscript thesis of the
late Joseph P. Warren on Shays’s Rebellion, which proved of
great value, and which I used with the kind permission of
Mr. Warren’s widow, Mrs. Maud Radford Warren. Through
the courtesy of the Yale University Press and Dr. A. B.
Darling I was enabled to examine the proof sheets of
Dr. Darling’s forthcoming volume on Political Changes in
Massachusetts. To Dr. W. E. Ladd of Boston I am indebted
for permission to publish a copy of the portrait of William
Ladd that is in his possession. The Hampton Library of
this village and the State Library at Albany have, as always,
been very kind in cooperating to afford me the use of certain
volumes, and many others have assisted me in one way and
another. To all I offer most cordial thanks.

James Truslow Adams

Bridgehampton, New York
October 8, 1925

CONTENTS

I. The War . 3

Divergence of American and English Political Ideas
— Geographical Isolation of New England —
Erroneous Forecasts as to the War — Military
Events — Privateering — Administration of the
Army

II. Economic Effects of the War . . 31

Scarcity of Food — High Prices — Depreciation of
the Currency — Attempts to Regulate Prices —
State Currencies — Taxation — Changes in Social
Structure — Difficulties of Business — Beginning
of Manufactures — Rise of New Men — Agricul¬
ture — Laboring Classes — Extravagance

III. Moral Effects of the War .... 60

Propaganda — Treatment of Loyalists — Half
Pay of American Officers — Post-War Psychology
— The Cincinnati — Effect of the War Intel¬
lectually — The Arts — Education — Religion —
Morals

IV. The Revolutionary Governments ... 80

Character of State Governments — New Consti¬
tutions — Conflict of Ideas between Classes —
Quarrel between Vermont and New York — Ver¬
mont Becomes an Independent State — Intrigues
with the British

V. Growing Unrest . 109

Dispute between Connecticut and Pennsylvania —
Western Land Claims — Effect of Peace on Busi¬
ness — Relations with England — West India
Trade — State Tariffs — English Competition —
Financial Crisis — Federal Impost — Rhode Is¬
land Paper Money — Resumption of Specie Pay¬
ment — Debts and Taxes — Increasing Violence

X

CONTENTS

VI.

N

VII.

VIII.

-• IX.

X.

XI.

Rebellion . 136

Distress among the Poor — Mob in New Hampshire
— Views of Ruling Class in Massachusetts —
Debtors — Reforms Demanded and Refused —
Holding of Conventions — Shays's Rebellion
Adoption of the Federal Constitution . 167

Need for Federal Union — Constitution Adopted
in the Several States — Economic Factors —
Parties — Conservative Reaction — Separation
of Maine Discussed — Recalcitrancy of Rhode
Island — Vermont Admitted to the Union
The Economic Structure, 1790-1800 . . 1 83

Questions of Sectional Strengths after Revolution
— New England Declines in Comparative Im¬
portance — Economic Character of the Popula¬
tion — Lack of Markets for Agricultural Prod¬
uce — Conditions of Agriculture — Movements
of Population — Land Companies — Manu¬
factures — Opening of the Oriental Trade —
Speculatioti

The Revolution Extended .... 204

The European War — Effect on Domestic Politics
— Enthusiasm for France — New England
Federalism — Democratic Clubs — Jay's Treaty
— Dominating Political Groups — Clergy in
Politics — Growth of Religious Dissent — Rise
of the Democrats — Talk of Disunion — Be¬
ginning of Irish Immigration

Prosperity and Ruin . 230

Democratic Victory — Political Methods and
Machinery — Suffrage Agitation in Connecticut
— Acquisition of Louisiana — Secessionist
Plot — Commercial Prosperity — Renewed Eu-
ropean Complications — Chesapeake Affair
— Impressment of Seamen — The Embargo
Sectionalism and the War .... 255

Pickering and Disunion — John Henry's Reports
— Protests against the Embargo — Secession

CONTENTS

xi

Plot of 1808 — Rage of New England against
the Enforcement Act — Repeal of Embargo —
Threatened Secession — War with England —
Opposition in New England — Government
Loans — Militia — Washington Benevolent So-
\ ) cieties

XII. Peace and the Hartford Convention . .281

Privateering — Trade with the Enemy — New
Embargo — Secession Again Threatened —
Prosperity and Manufactures — New England
Absorbs Specie of Entire Country — Govern¬
ment Loan — Conscription Act — Hartford Con¬
vention — Nullification Resolves — End of the
War

XIII. A New Outlook, 1815-1825 .... 302

Effects of Peace — Shipping — Manufactures —
Agriculture — The Tariff — Immigration and
Emigration — Urban Development — Politics
and Finance — Religious Societies — Overthrow
of Old Order in Connecticut — New Constitution
— Separation of Church and State — Revision
of Massachusetts Constitution — Maine Be-
co?nes a Separate State — Missouri Com¬
promise

XIV. A Changing Society . 328

Character of Parties — Widening Gulf between
Rich and Poor — Foreigners — Pauper Prob¬
lem — Anti-Catholic Feeling — Destruction of
Charlestown Convent — Riots in Boston — Suf¬
frage in Rhode Island — Changes in Transpor¬
tation — Effect on Capital and Labor — Char¬
acter of Labor Movement — The Ten-Hour Day
— Strikes — Trades Unions — Workingmen s
Party — Panic of 1837

XV. Humanitarianism . 351

Development of Literature — Unitarianism —
Transcendentalism — Woman s Rights — Brook
Farm — Education — School Buildings —

Xll

CONTENTS

Teachers — Nonattendance — Imprisonment of
Debtors — Prisons — Blind — Deaf and Dumb
— Insane — Temperance — Peace Societies

XVI. Strife . 377

Maine Boundary Dispute — Dorr War in Rhode
Island — Irish Immigration — Business Re¬
covery — Large Profits of Manufacturers —
Wages — Housing and Working Conditions
of Labor — Changes in Factory Personnel —
Discovery of Gold in California

XVII. The Black Cloud . 401

Attitude toward Slavery Issue — Virginia Debate
— Garrison and “ The Liberator ” — Northern
Sentiment — Negro Education — Attacks on
Schools — American Colonization Society —
Antislavery Societies — Position of the Churches
— The Garrison Mob — Love joy Murder —
Latimer Case — Hoar and South Carolina —
Changed Policy of Abolitionists — Texas and
the Mexican War

ILLUSTRATIONS

A Federalist Conception of the Thwarting of

Jefferson ...... Frontispiece

From an original engraving in the American Antiquarian
Society

Deficiency Levy on Town, 1782
Library of Congress

Proclamation of Governor Trumbull, 1778
Library of Congress

Nominations for Election, 1776
Library of Congress

. 21

33

• 83

Fort Warren and Boston Harbor, 1853 . . .184

From an unpublished water-color sketch by Thomas Kelah
Wharton; original in the New York Public Library

Ship Hazard of Salem . . . .

From the original in the Peabody Museum

Salem Ships Hercules and Australia
From originals in the Peabody Museum

Yale Students on the Green
From Leslie's Weekly , 1856

Old Hotel Bill, 1808 .

Library of Congress

Handbill Giving Notice of Embargo, 1812
Library of Congress

Cartoon of the Hartford Convention
Original in the New York Public Library

. 200

204

220

. 251

. 267

. 292

XIV

ILLUSTRATIONS

Salem Ships Rome and Monk
From originals in the Peabody Museum

304

The Custom House, Boston, 1853 .... 312

From an unpublished pen-and-ink sketch by Thomas Kelah
Wharton ; original in the New York Public Library

City of Boston from the Harbor, 1853 . . .356

From an unpublished pen-and-ink sketch by Thomas Kelah
Wharton; original in the New York Public Library

Temperance Convention Program, 1841
Library of Congress

• 375

William Ladd, Pioneer of International Peace . 376
From a portrait in the possession of Dr . William E. Ladd
of Boston

Cartoon of the Dorr War
Library of Congress

Broadside of the Dorr War
Library of Congress

• 383

• 385

William Lloyd Garrison . 408

From a mezzotint engraving by John Sartain ( 1836 ), after
a painting by M. C. Torrey {1835)

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

1776-1850

NEW ENGLAND
IN THE REPUBLIC

1776-1850

CHAPTER I

THE WAR

Divergence of American and English Political Ideas — Geo¬
graphical Isolation of New England — Erroneous Forecasts as
to the War — Military Events — Privateering — Administration
of the Army

“ If you want war, nourish a doctrine ” was one of the sayings
of the late William Graham Sumner.1 Doctrines had been
nourished in plenty on both sides of the Atlantic during the
dozen years that had elapsed since the conquest of Canada
and the Peace of Paris in 1763. The power of Parliament
“to bind the colonies and people of America ... in all cases
whatsoever,” “no taxation without representation,” “natural
rights,” “consent of the governed” — these and other rhe¬
torical phantasms impenetrable to analysis had kindled passion
instead of arousing reason. Such questions as those relating
to the laws of trade or of taxation to meet the needs of the new
imperialism which was beginning to replace the old mercan¬
tilism might, indeed, have yielded to reason had the two
parties understood one another or been in a mood for compro¬
mise. But, as we have tried to show in the preceding two
volumes,2 there had been, almost from the beginning, a steady

1 War and Other Essay s, (Yale University Press, 1919), p. 36.

2J. T. Adams, Founding of New England, (Boston, 1921); Revolutionary New Eng¬
land, 1691-1776, (Boston, 1923).

4

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

divergence in political concepts between the two portions of
the English race divided by the ocean and subject to different
influences of environment.1 In England, insular, conservative,
and governed since the revolution of 1688 by a middle class
which was singularly inert mentally, a certain complex of
political ideas was held tenaciously and seemed flawless to its
possessors. In America a wholly different complex of ideas,
developed from the frontier and colonial conditions, was held
equally tenaciously and seemed equally flawless there. Both
sides had made a show of appealing to reason and precedent,
but this was merely attempting to validate, by rationalizing,
positions already assumed. The extremists on either side had
failed to understand one another, had found no common
ground, and then by a series of acts and counter-acts had pre¬
cipitated the crisis. At the point which our story had reached
at the end of the last volume, that crisis had developed into
civil war. It is now necessary to consider the profound effects
of that war upon the people whose destiny we have been
following.

Throughout all the varying phases of the economic and
political life of New England one of the marked influences has
been the geographical isolation of the section, which lies wholly
to the south of the St. Lawrence and to the east of the Hudson
— the two great northern highways to the interior of the
country. New Englanders, therefore, for most of their history,
have looked eastward rather than westward, and their interest
has been maritime rather than continental. The products of
the Northwest tended to be diverted in two streams passing
through Montreal and New York, following the rivers flowing
to the sea past those two cities. Before the Revolution and
for many years afterward American manufactures were negli¬
gible as a basis for commerce. New England possessed no
great hinterland from which to draw and had but an ungenerous
soil within her borders. Her carrying trade, therefore, was
mainly made up from the export of a moderate agricultural
surplus, of horses, lumber, and fish, and from the exchange of

1 Cf. C. M. Andrews, The Colonial Background of the American Revolution , (Yale
University Press, 1924), chap. 11, and pp. 181^.

THE WAR

5

commodities between ports of the other colonies and Europe
in a circuitous trade. Even before the Revolution, Boston,
by far the most important commercial centre in New England,
had begun to decline rapidly as compared with her growing
rivals, New York and Philadelphia. For forty years the
population of the Massachusetts capital had remained almost
stationary at about fifteen thousand, whereas that of New
York had passed twenty thousand and Philadelphia numbered
almost thirty-five thousand.

The geographical situation at once became a factor in deter¬
mining the military movements of the war. Lord Howe had
evacuated Boston with the British army by the nineteenth of
March, 177 6, and Washington left for New York with all but
five of the American regiments a fortnight later. Throughout
the remainder of the struggle, lasting for seven years, although
New England did not wholly escape the presence and ravages
of hostile troops, particularly on her seaboard, all the more
important military events occurred outside her borders. The
clashes which did take place within them possess only an
interest which is almost wholly local and antiquarian, and the
scope of the present work does not permit of a detailed narrative
of the entire contest in its wider aspects.1

The political leaders who had been instrumental in stirring
the agitation which precipitated the conflict had quite erroneous
ideas as to the nature of the struggle upon which they had
urged their fellow citizens to embark. Even by the middle of
1777, when the nature of the contest should have been evident,
Samuel Adams was still writing that he hoped the war would

be of short duration.” 2 Of necessity, most of the colonists
had been limited to a provincial outlook upon the affairs of the
world. Those who did take an imperial point of view or who
feared, not without reason, that the power of Great Britain

1 Few subjects have a more voluminous literature than the military history of the
Revolution. In spite of the author’s well-known and strong anti-American bias, the
best short account of the operations is probably that contained in vol. Ill of the Hon.
J. W. Fortescue’s History of the British Army , (London, 1 9 1 1 ) . F. V. Green’s The
Revolutionary War, (New York, 1911), is mainly valuable for the series of maps, taken
from Avery’s History of the United States. Captain A. T. Mahan’s The Influence of
Sea Power upon History , (Boston, 1898), is of the first importance.

2 Writings of Samuel Adams , (New York, 1907), vol. Ill, p. 394.

6

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

would prove overwhelming when fully exerted, were naturally
found, for the most part, in the Tory ranks, and their opinions
were eliminated from the councils of the patriots. Moreover,
as we have pointed out in the preceding volume, England had
led the colonists to believe, by a long series of concessions, that
she would always yield if only pressed hard enough. From a
military point of view, whenever the colonists had come into
close cooperation with the British troops and navy, as in the
Canadian and Jamaican expeditions of the first decade of the
century, the Cartagena expedition of 1740, and the joint op¬
erations of the Seven Years' War, England had been too apt
to show herself at her lowest point of efficiency and military
ability, and this led many to underrate her strength.1

On the other hand, in spite of much loose talk by the public
and some of the politicians in England, the leading military and
naval authorities of that country saw the magnitude of the
problem more clearly than did the colonial patriots. Although
the saving of the empire by force was held to be not only neces¬
sary but feasible, the difficulties were not underrated there as
were those of defense in the colonies. Indeed, in some respects
the English rather over- than under-estimated them. General
Conway reckoned that, granted a colonial population of three
millions, the colonists could raise an army of a hundred and
fifty thousand men — about six times as many as the colonists
were ever able to put in the field at one time.

The first plans suggested were abandoned from the impossi¬
bility of executing them. Although all of the thirteen colonies
had declared themselves in rebellion, it was assumed that New
England was the real seat of the trouble, and it was proposed to
isolate that section and subdue it separately. A force operat¬
ing northward from New York and another southward from
Canada, along the lines of the Hudson and Lake Champlain,
would cut her off from the other colonies, while a third expedi¬
tion, entering from Boston, could overrun her territory. This,
however, it was estimated, would take from thirty to fifty
thousand men. The difficulties of transport were such that
General Harvey, the Adjutant-General, said that, “taking

1 Adams, Revolutionary New England , 1691-1776) pp. 67 /., 76 ff.t 164 ff.t 246.

THE WAR

7

America as it now stands, it is impossible to conquer it with
our British Army. . . . To attempt to conquer it by our
land force is as wild an idea as ever controverted common
sense.” 1 While Gage was in Boston, Harvey, growing impa¬
tient, wrote that “America is an ugly job” and that “unless
a settled plan of operations be agreed upon for next spring our
army will be destroyed by damned driblets.” 2

Towns situated on the coast could, indeed, be destroyed and
the seaboard ravaged by landing expeditions here and there, but
there was no vital centre to be pierced, and to attempt to con¬
trol a population of three millions scattered along a thousand
miles of shore with unlimited back-country to which to retire,
by military forces three thousand miles from their home base,
was, as the emphatic general perspicuously remarked, “a
damned affair indeed.”

England did possess one weapon of overwhelming force — her
navy; and the Secretary of War and some of the other leaders
maintained that she should place her whole reliance upon that
arm of the service. It was proposed to occupy and hold the
chief colonial ports as naval bases and to cut off the whole ex¬
ternal and coasting trade of the colonists. Had England not
frittered away her energies but pursued this course energetically
and consistently, it is not unlikely that she would have been
successful and the colonists been forced to accept some com¬
promise plan of imperial union before France came into the
struggle. Had, however, the war been brought to a compara¬
tively early conclusion by this method, it would have been a
conclusion wholly different from that counted upon by the
patriot leaders.

The deciding factor in the struggle proved eventually to be
the naval forces of the Bourbon Powers, when they entered the
contest on the side of the colonies in 1778. Certain elements
in France may have been swayed by sentimental considerations,
such as the desire for revenge upon England and — to a smaller
extent — sympathy upon the part of a few with the aspirations
of the colonists, but the measures of the Government were

1 Quoted by Fortescue, Hist, of Brit. Army , vol. Ill, p. 169.

2 Quoted ibid., p. 17 1.

8

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

taken with more practical points in view. The reconquest
of any American continental possession was acknowledged
to be out of the question. What France wished was to acquire
some of the English West Indies, to possess herself again of
her former holdings in India, which had passed to the English,
and to lessen the power of England by securing the indepen¬
dence of the colonies or in any other way. She had, however,
no intention of entering the struggle unless assured of probable
success, and she watched carefully for three years before doing
so, to determine whether the colonies would be able to make
a sufficient diversion to drain heavily the strength of England.
To a great extent, if not wholly, the colonists were able to do
this, and to secure the services of their later allies, because
of the blunders of British policy. This statement is not intended
to lessen in any way the credit which is due to Washington and
other officers and to the sacrifice and suffering of the men under
them. Had it not been for these, in spite of British blunders
the revolt would have collapsed early, and instead of a suc¬
cessful revolution it would have been merely one more sup¬
pressed uprising in the long history of the empire.

The blundering military policy was partially due to the same
cause which had been at the bottom of some of the political
mistakes in the earlier stages of the dispute — the reliance
placed upon Tory statements of conditions, and upon the sup¬
posed strength of the Tory party. As we have noted, the
Loyalist party was numerically a strong one, probably com¬
prising one third of all the colonists and forming a majority
in such colonies as New York, Pennsylvania, and South Caro¬
lina.1 The Loyalists, however, lacked both the aggressiveness
and the organization of the Revolutionists, and suffered from
the violence and intimidation of the methods employed by the
latter. From representations made by prominent Tories and
by some of the royal governors, the English Government felt
that the presence of British troops would serve to strengthen
the loyal element, and military operations were planned with
a view to securing such support. Tories in great numbers did
flock to the royal colors. Indeed, it has been stated, although

1 Adams, Revolutionary New England , 1691-1776, p. 446.

THE WAR

9

not wholly proved, that more colonials served in the imperial
than in the revolutionary army. They served, however, merely
as recruits, and nowhere outside the British lines did they or¬
ganize sufficiently to secure control of any of the governmental
organizations or to interfere seriously with the working of the
revolutionary governments. As the historian of the British
army has pointed out, of all foundations on which to plan a
campaign the most treacherous is reliance upon loyal elements
in the population. Yet this has always been a favorite policy
with England. In the Revolution in America it unquestion¬
ably distracted the British counsels and hampered operations.

Long before Washington forced Lord Howe to evacuate
Boston that move had been agreed upon by the British officers,
both Howe and Clinton having written home in the preceding
year that New York and Newport offered better harbors and
were strategically more important. When the evacuation
occurred Howe sailed first to Nova Scotia, and while there a
part of his force had to be diverted to Canada on account of
the attack on that province by Montgomery and Arnold.1 This
diversion was perhaps the most important aspect of that ill-
fated enterprise, and delayed Howe from proceeding to New
York until July.

Meanwhile, with the idea of conquering the colonies south of
Virginia by the aid of the Tories, a British fleet had made an
unsuccessful attack upon Charleston under Sir Henry Clinton.
This expedition was a characteristic blunder. It was persisted
in by the Ministry against the advice of the Secretary of War
and the military advisers, and was delayed five months beyond
the time when the conditions might have given it a certain
measure of success. On its failure, Clinton sailed to join Howe
at New York. Washington had already arrived there before
any of the enemy’s forces, but the patriots were forced to re¬
treat across New Jersey and into Pennsylvania. By the end
of the year the British were in occupation of New York and the
immediately surrounding country, of New Jersey as far south
as Trenton and Bordentown, of the island of Rhode Island and
the town of Newport, the last named having been captured as

1 Adams, Revolutionary New England , 1691-1776, pp. 430/.

IO

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

a result of an attack in November under Lord Percy. Congress
had taken refuge in Baltimore, and Washington’s army had
shrunk to five thousand men. His brilliant dash across the
Delaware on Christmas Day and successful surprise of the
Hessians at Trenton saved the situation at the last moment;
the British were cleared from almost the whole of New Jersey,
and Washington took up his winter quarters at Morristown.

The main events of 1777 were the defeat of Washington at
the Brandywine ; the consequent occupation of Philadelphia
by the British ; and the unsuccessful attempt by General
Burgoyne to invade New York by way of the well-worn route
of Lake Champlain and the Hudson. This latter effort had
been undertaken for the purpose of isolating New England,
and in its far-reaching political effects Burgoyne’s disastrous
defeat and the surrender of his entire force at Saratoga on
October 17 was one of the turning-points of the war.

In New England there were no military movements which
rose above the grade of mere raiding or minor engagements.
An expedition planned in Massachusetts during the summer
to attack Nova Scotia and to protect certain friendly people
along the Bay of Fundy was practically abandoned even before
it started, and a single company of Maine militia went alone,
capturing a small fort and bringing in several families. In
August, Burgoyne had detached a mixed force of about five
hundred men to attack a store of munitions which had been
gathered at Bennington, Vermont, with the expectation that
the Loyalists would assist him in the operation.1 They failed
to do so, and in spite of reenforcements of five hundred more
men, the force was defeated on the fifteenth by about two
thousand recruits from the countryside, hastily raised by the
gallant John Stark. The suddenness with which the force
appeared and the dash with which they acted opened Bur¬
goyne’s eyes to the peril of his position. “The great bulk of
the country is undoubtedly with the Congress,” he wrote, and
“wherever the King’s forces point, militia to the amount of
three or four thousand assemble in twenty-four hours. They

1 The number of men engaged varies by three hundred per cent in different accounts.
Fortescue states that he took the number of 500 from Burgoyne’s own list.

THE WAR

1 1

bring with them their subsistence ; the alarm over, they return
to their farms. The Hampshire Grants in particular, a coun¬
try unpeopled and almost unknown in the last war, now
abounds in the most active and most rebellious race of the con¬
tinent, and hangs like a gathering storm on my left.” 1 A
month after the battle of Bennington, the results of which
elated the patriots as much as they depressed the British com¬
mander, a secret expedition was planned by the Massachusetts
legislature for an attack upon the British forces on Rhode
Island. About three thousand men were raised and marched
as far as Tiverton, but the expedition failed and was without
any effect upon the British occupation.

In spite of the capture of Burgoyne, the year 1778 opened
gloomily for the American cause. The British were in pos¬
session of Newport, New York, and Philadelphia. For a
battle of Bennington several thousand militia might swarm
from their homes to return to them next day, but at Valley
Forge the main body of the Continental troops had dwindled
to less than three thousand who were ill fed, almost naked,
and partly mutinous. In Congress and the army powerful
influences were at work to undermine the position of the com¬
mander in chief. Even in spite of British blundering, the col¬
lapse of the Revolution seemed imminent unless allies could
be found who would bolster the falling cause.

From the beginning of the revolt within the empire, Eng¬
land’s enemies in Europe had watched events with the most
intense interest, for the purpose of obtaining what benefits they
could for themselves from the weakening of the greatest of
commercial rivals and the mistress of the seas. Spain was
hostile to the thought of American independence, as offering a
bad example to her own colonies, and the attitude of France
has already been noted. For the purpose of exhausting their
European rival, both Bourbon states had granted or allowed
assistance in money and stores to be sent to the colonists, but
the American diplomatic representatives had been playing
for an active alliance, and the surrender of Burgoyne gave them

1 Quoted from a dispatch from Burgoyne by R. E, Robinson, Vermont , (Boston,
1892), p. 177.

12

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

their opportunity. On February 6, 1778 a treaty of alliance
was signed with France; and although Spain never became
the ally of the United States, she entered the war some months
later as the ally of France. With these two events the war
passed into a wholly new phase. Howe was succeeded by Sir
Henry Clinton in Philadelphia, with orders to evacuate that
city, attack the French in the West Indies, harry the New Eng¬
land coast towns, and centre his operations at New York.
From this time to the close of the contest there were no major
operations in any of the northern states. The effect of the
new situation was seen in the sending by England of Commis¬
sioners to the United States with terms of peace, which, how¬
ever, were not acceptable.

The real importance of the war now shifts to the naval strug¬
gle between the almost evenly matched powers of England
and the two Bourbon kingdoms, far afield from the scene of
our local narrative. In New England the year 1778 was
marked only by raiding by British troops in the neighbor¬
hood of Newport and by the most determined effort that the
colonials made during the war to rid Rhode Island of the enemy.
As a result of the French alliance, Comte d’Estaing appeared
off the Delaware River in July with a powerful fleet, passing
thence by way of New York to Newport. A Colonial force of
ten thousand men under General Sullivan, with Greene and La¬
fayette, was raised to Cooperate with the French commander in
a combined attack upon General Pigott and his five thousand
British troops on Rhode Island. Howe, who had received
naval reenforcements, sailed from New York to fight d’Estaing,
but while both were manoeuvring for position a terrific storm
arose. The Frenchman, after his vessels had been considerably
damaged, put to sea without attacking the inferior British
fleet and departed for Boston. The American land forces
had already crossed to Rhode Island, and it was only by the
exertion of much skill that they were enabled to make good their
retreat, after being abandoned by the French ships whose
assistance had been an integral part of the plan of attack.
By October of the following year (1779) the situation had al¬
tered so far by the shifting of interest to the Southern colonies

THE WAR

i3

and the West Indies, that Clinton voluntarily withdrew his
forces from Newport and evacuated Rhode Island on the
twenty-eighth of that month.

Some months earlier, in July, Connecticut had suffered
from a raiding expedition by the English fleet under Tryon.
On the fourth, New Haven was attacked and plundered ; Fair-
field was burned on the eighth; the village of Green’s Farms
the following morning. On the eleventh Tryon destroyed
Norwalk; but by that time the people were mustering in
strength, and having lost nearly three hundred men in the
operations, the British withdrew. The property loss to the
colonists was extremely heavy and the people of the ruined
villages and towns suffered severely, but the episode was with¬
out effect upon the general conduct of the war. In Massachu¬
setts the only incident of the year was an expedition undertaken
in June to dislodge about a thousand British troops from the
Penobscot. It was planned to raise fifteen hundred men, but
only nine hundred could be mustered after drafting had been
resorted to. The land force was to act in concert with a small
naval flotilla of nineteen vessels, and on July 28 a landing was
effected before a newly erected British fortress. The losses of
the attacking party were extraordinarily heavy, amounting to
one quarter of the number engaged. The fleet did not cooperate
properly, and as reenforcements arrived for the British by sea,
the undertaking was hastily abandoned with complete failure.

The next year was devoid of even minor military local inter¬
est in New England, and the only event which subsequently
occurred there before the close of the war was the attack upon
New London by the traitor General Arnold on the sixth of
September, 1781. The town, although it had been warned of
the presence of the hostile fleet, was utterly unprepared for
defense, and about nine hundred or a thousand men landed
on the New London side of the harbor and burned a consider¬
able part of the town with hardly any opposition. The harbor
was full of colonial shipping, and in order to facilitate the
destruction of the vessels the enemy landed about eight hundred
men on the Groton shore to silence Fort Griswold. Colonel
William Ledyard, however, gave this party an unexpected

14

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

check, and, with a garrison scarcely sufficient to man the posts,
made a most heroic defense. Finally forced to surrender, a
considerable part of the defenders were massacred by the
British, Colonel Ledyard himself being run through the heart
with his own sword by the officer to whom he had just sur¬
rendered it with a word of courtesy. The whole affair is a
blot upon the honor of the British army which is beyond con¬
donation. The property damage in New London included a
large part of the shipping, almost all the wharves, sixty-five
dwelling houses, thirty-one stores filled with merchandise,
and many other buildings. Like almost all the operations in
New England, however, the affair was a mere raid and without
other result than severe local loss.

The fate of the colonies was not being decided upon the
continent of America but upon the sea, in the contest between
the English and the allied navies. In April Washington was in
despair. “We are at the end of our tether,” he wrote to
Laurens in Paris. The army could not be provisioned because
there was no money ; the troops were almost naked and muti¬
nous ; the hospitals were without medicines. Without a foreign
loan, he added, the troops could not be kept together for that
campaign, much less assembled for another year. “If France
delays a timely and powerful aid in this critical posture of our
affairs,” he wrote, “it will avail us nothing should she attempt
it hereafter.”'1 The end, however, was approaching. The
two contestants were so evenly matched at sea that errors were
fatal, and England’s policy was faulty. Without an ounce
of strength to spare, she failed to make the best available use
of her resources, and by one blunder — the lengthening of her
lines of communication in America by the diversion of a part
of her arms to the southern colonies — she gave the American
forces their opportunity. When Cornwallis, after his retreat,
found himself shut up within the peninsula of Yorktown in
Virginia, the arrival of a French fleet under de Grasse with
large military forces enabled Washington with the main body
of the Continental army to force the surrender of the British

1 The Writings of George Washington , ed. by W. C. Ford, (New York, 1891), vol. IX,
pp. 212/.

THE WAR

15

general with his seven thousand troops on the nineteenth of
October, 1781.

From this time onward there was no further attempt on the
part of England to continue active hostilities in America,
although Clinton remained with his forces in New York. The
Americans also settled down in apathy, and disorganization
appeared everywhere. The question of the American colonial
revolt had been absorbed into a far wider struggle, which con¬
tinued in the West Indies, on the ocean, in the Mediterranean,
and in India. It was two years more before England, strug¬
gling against the world, finally acknowledged herself beaten
and agreed to a peace. On September 3, 1783, in the Treaty
of Versailles, the independence of the American colonies was
at last acknowledged, although there had been a provisional
treaty arranged eleven months earlier.

The decision of the contest depended in the last analysis
upon naval power, but at no time had the navy of the united
colonies been a factor of prime importance, in spite of certain
brilliant individual exploits. However, in harassing and
destroying British commerce, even on the coasts of England
herself, in capturing and threatening transports, and in secur¬
ing much-needed supplies, both Continental ships and priva¬
teers had rendered valuable service, and, from the beginning,
New England took a leading part in this form of warfare.1 As
early as August 1775 the Rhode Island Assembly had memori¬
alized Congress in favor of the immediate creation of a Conti¬
nental navy,2 so that it was not inappropriate that, when
formed, a Rhode Island man, Esek Hopkins, should have been
appointed its first commander.3

It was indeed natural that the naval problems of the war
should appeal particularly to the maritime colonies, and John
Adams, for Massachusetts, took an important part in the es¬
tablishment of the revolutionary naval forces. These, however,

1 For the naval aspects of the struggle as a whole, Mahan, The Influence of Sea
Power upon History , remains the leading authority. Useful summaries of American
participation are found in Gardner W. Allen’s Naval History of the American Revolution ,
(Boston, 1913), 1 vols., and Edgar S. Maclay’s History of American Privateers , (New
York, 1899).

2 Records of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations , vol. VII, p. 369.

8 Edward Field, Esek Hopkins , (Providence, 1898), chap. 111.

1 6

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

so far failed to develop as had been expected, that at no time
were there more than three thousand men in the personnel. In
addition to the Continental navy, however, eleven of the states,
including the four New England ones, had small fleets of their
own in commission. Rhode Island put two small sloops in
service as early as June 1775 ; Connecticut followed the next
month by providing two vessels, subsequently extending her
local force to twelve ; Massachusetts, during the course of the
war, had as many as fifteen sea-going vessels ; and New Hamp¬
shire had one or two. The enemy’s ships were continually
harassing colonial commerce along the coast, Long Island
Sound being infested with them, and these little state navies
did service of some value, both in protecting colonial shipping
near shore and in destroying or capturing small vessels of the
enemy.

Of more importance, particularly in the life of the people,
were the swarms of privateers which put out from almost every
port in America, although it is impossible to reach exact esti¬
mates as to their numbers. Commissions were issued both
by the Continental Congress and by many of the states.
Changes in the name, rig, and ownership of the vessel occur
with great frequency, and so tend to duplication in the records,
whereas on the other hand, the lack of imagination in finding
names counts on the other side of the score. From Beverly
alone there were fourteen vessels by the name of Fortune and
twenty-four by that of Dolphin.1 It is probable that the
total number of privateers for all the colonies during the war
was not far from two thousand, and also that of these nearly
one half were owned in Massachusetts. A very conservative
estimate of the number of men engaged would place them at
not less than ten times those in the regular navy, or over thirty
thousand. Of the spirit of speculation which was fostered by
this mode of warfare and of its other economic results we shall
speak in a later chapter, merely noting here that its military
aspects, although not unimportant, were not of the first magni¬
tude. As with the ships of the regular navy, the work of the

10. T. Thorndike, “Beverly Privateers in the American Revolution,” Col. Soc.
Mass., Publications , vol. XXIV, p. 323.

THE WAR

i7

privateers was that of commerce-destroyers. They brought in
money, goods, and occasionally military stores of value, and
although they undoubtedly did much to hamper British trade,
that trade was of too vast extent to be more than wounded
by such methods, so that nothing was accomplished against
what was, after all, the main element in the situation — the
British navy. Stories of success were hailed in the colonial
press and probably did much to help the morale of the colonists.
For example, in June 1777, after a chronicle of the capture
of six prizes by one of the Massachusetts state naval vessels
and four by the Continental ship Rising States, we read that
“the success of the American cruizers has given a prodigious
wound to the British Trade. It is computed in England that
£1,500,000 sterling has been taken in the West Indies trade
alone. The consequence has been several capital houses in
England have failed for large sums and more are expected to
share the same fate.” 1 Nevertheless, American privateers
were frequently captured, the risks were enormous, and the
losses inflicted in retaliation by British and Tory privateers
on colonial shipping were also very heavy.

At the beginning of the war there was no standing colonial
army in any of the colonies, for in all of them there was strong
prejudice against such a force, which, like a strong executive,
was believed to savor of tyranny. New England, like the rest
of America, had militia regiments which mustered certain days
in the year, but these had become a farce, and muster-days
were merely uproarious picnics on a large scale. Including
both the “active” and “alarm” lists, the militia supposedly
took in all men between the ages of sixteen and sixty-five, and
each company elected its own officers. The difficulties which
Washington experienced with his motley collection, both officers
and men, at Boston have already been touched upon.2 He
roundly denounced the folly of attempting to carry on war
with short-term enlistments of such militia levies, and in Sep¬
tember 1776 Congress voted to raise eighty-eight battalions,
amounting in all to sixty-three thousand men, for three years

1 Massachusetts Gazette , June 2, 1777.

2 Adams, Revolutionary New England , i6<yi-iyy6i pp. 435 Jff.

i8

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

or the duration of the war, but the men actually raised never
formed more than a small fraction of that number. Congress
also offered a bounty of twenty pounds and a hundred acres of
land, to which the individual colonies added further, Massa¬
chusetts, for example, beginning with an additional twenty
pounds.1 After the patriotic fervor of the first few months
had worn off, the greatest difficulty was experienced throughout
the struggle in securing men for the army. New England did
her part nobly and none of the colonies exceeded Massachusetts
in her efforts, yet even she at no time had her full complement
in the field, and at the end of the war had only four thousand
three hundred and seventy men in the Continental line as
against her quota of eight thousand three hundred and fifty,
or about one half.2

As large numbers in all New England engaged from time to
time in special expeditions such as those already mentioned,
or in short-term service locally in the militia, as well as in the
Continental army and navy, the state navies, and privateering,
a large proportion of the men of military age in New England
saw service in some branch of the armed forces during the eight
years of war. The Marquis de Chastellux, traveling in that
section toward the end of the struggle, noted that “among the
men I have met with, above twenty years of age, of whatsoever
condition, I have not found two who have not bore arms, heard
the whistling of balls, and even received wounds.”3 “I have
been endeavoring to add to my help but could not,” wrote
John Bradford, the Continental agent in Massachusetts, from
Boston in 1777, cc the young people all having Engag’d in the
Army.” 4 “More than forty men are now drafted from this
town,” wrote Mrs. John Adams from Braintree a few months
earlier. “More than one half, from sixteen to fifty are now

1 The two most useful works on the administration of the army are : The Adminis¬
tration of the American Revolutionary Army , by L. C. Hatch, Harvard Historical Studies,
1904, and The Private Soldier under Washington , by C. K. Bolton, (New York, 1902).
On raising troops in Massachusetts, vide J. Smith, “How Massachusetts Raised her
Troops in the Revolution,” Mass. Hist. Soc., Proceedings , 1922, pp. 345 jf.

2 Smith, op. cit ., p. 355.

3 Travels in North America in the Years 1780 , 1781 , 1782, (Dublin, 1787), vol. I,
p. 19.

4 Letter Book of John Bradford, (manuscript), in Library of Congress, April 9, 1777.

THE WAR

19

in the service ... I hardly think you can be sensible how
much we are thinned in this province. ... If it is necessary
to make any more drafts upon us, the women must reap the
harvests.” 1 “I am sorry, however,” she continued, “to see
a spirit so venal prevailing everywhere ... no one will go
without a large bounty, though only for two months, and each
town seems to think its honor engaged in outbidding the
others.”

The number of men requisitioned for the Continental army
from each of the New England states was apportioned among
the several towns, which were made responsible for furnishing
their quotas under pain of fines. As the difficulty of securing men
became steadily greater, owing to their disinclination to enter
the service, these fines were increased, as were also the bounties
offered by the towns to secure recruits.2 Drafting was early
resorted to as ever-increasing bounties failed to bring results.
In most cases the man drafted was required either to serve
personally or to provide a substitute within twenty-four hours
under pain of a considerable fine, at Northampton, for example,
by 1780, this fine being made £150 in the then depreciated
currency.3 Drafting was unpopular, and some towns voted
to raise money by taxation to hire men, this being done as
early as 1777 in Weston, where it was voted that: “Whereas
it is difficult in Coming at Justice in Drafting men to go into
the Servise of the United States by a Common Draft,” it would
be more equitable to levy a town tax as usual and hire men if
they could be found. By 1780 this same town was petitioning
the legislature for permission to go outside the town limits
and hire men wherever they could be found in other towns
which might have met their quota.4 Towns were thus bidding
against each other, and the high bounties paid brought about
frauds similar to those of the “bounty jumpers” of the Civil
War. Men would enlist, receive their bounty money, desert,

1 Letters of Mrs. Adams , (Boston, 1840), vol. I, p. 106.

2 Smith, op. cit., gives the records as to bounties for a number of Massachusetts
towns, pp. 361 ff. Local histories and town records all repeat the same story, varying
only in details. The bounties offered by the state legislatures may be found in the
colonial records for each.

3 J. R. Trumbull, History of Northampton , (Northampton, 1902), vol. II, p. 431.

4 Records of the Town of Weston , (Boston, 1893), PP- 23I> 233> 2^9-

20

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

and then reenlist elsewhere, sometimes repeating this process
a number of times. Sometimes they did not even enlist them¬
selves, but still more meanly hired others to do so for a share
in the money, as in the case of one Fostwick, who hired boys at
£60 each to enlist and desert, disappearing himself when the
lads were caught and disciplined.1

Many drafted men at once hired substitutes or merely paid
their fines and remained at home. The cry was early raised
that the rich and well-to-do were escaping military service,
whereas the burden fell upon the poor. “Of the militia that
lately went to New York,” wrote a complainant from a Con¬
necticut town in 1776, “there was about one hundred and forty,
and much the greater part of them were men of little property.
Of those other gentlemen that stayed at home, more than
one hundred under fifty years of age, all [were] men of interest,
and pray what have they done to defend it ? Why they paid
their rates, and may be have given forty shillings to encourage
men to enlist : But what is this compared with his poor neighbor
who is called forth when in the midst of his business, has no
money, receives but twenty shillings, and that advance pay
not as a bounty, obliged to go and leave his affairs running to
ruin ? I ask are these things equal and just ?” 2

In New England both the colonial and town governments
made desperate efforts to meet the demands made upon them,
in men, money, and supplies, and in caring for the impoverished
families of men serving at the front. The records of the little
town of Plymouth, for example, are pathetic and give us a
vivid picture of conditions. The town evidently had done
everything possible to meet the requisitions of the colonial
government. In October 1778, at a town meeting, taxes were
laid for “a Sum not Exceeding Sixteen hundred pounds, Chiefly
to Support the Famelys of those Soldiers that went into the
Continental Armey,” and the care of these was farmed out to one
Captain Jesse Harlow for one year at seven and a half per cent
of his disbursements. The following month it was voted to
set to work all those persons who “are Dayly beging from house

1 Mass. Gazette , (Springfield), July 2, 1782.

2 Connecticut Courant , Oct. 14, 1776.

g«7i*V»V*

Commerrweahh of

JkUlUCiiUtlTT*

'l

The HONORA iB L. S

Hjenry Gardner, Efq;

Trcafurer and Receiver- General cf Cud Commonwealth*

to tit St lei! men tr Aff effort oj fit fvn of

Y

Greeting, fee,’

N Obedience to a Refolution of the Commonwealth aforefaid, of the Eighth of Marebl
1 7ii, chefe are in the Name of &id Common wealth*! to will and ret ire you forth-*

cTfT'/f

with to afTcft the Sum of

on the deficient Clafa or ClafTet in your Town or Plantation*, being the average Price of the
Cod of railing the Men tofupply the Deficiency of the Majfaebu, ittt - Line <f the Armv*
agreeable to a Notification of hit facellency the Covcrnor and Council of faid Common-
ealth, transmitted to the Treafurer of faid Commonwealth, bearing Date July 31, 178a, iit
Purfuance of the Relolve aforefaid, together with Twenty per Cent, added thereto : You aro
likcwife required to levy on each Clafs deficient at aforefaid, Jwo per Cent . on faid Sum, as a
Fee for the Conftable or Collector to defrey the Erpence of colle<fling the fame; which Lift
or Lifts, when compleated according to Law, you are to deliver to the Colleger or Collcdlofi,
Conftable or Coaftables of your Town or Plantation ; and mate Return to me of the Namo
or Names of the faid Conftable or Conftablei, Col’edtor or Colcdtors, together with the Sunt
<r Sums to them refpedlively committed to colled!, within Five Days from the Date hereof^
Hereof you arc not to fail, as you will anlwer your Neglcdt at the Peril of the Law.

GIVEN under my Hand and Seal at Bofton, thelbirty-frft Day of July, in the Year of
our LORD One 7 btujand Seven Hundred and Ligltj-doo, and in fit Seventh Teat
of American independence.

Deficiency Levy on Town, 1782

Library of Congress

22

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

to house.” The following August it was voted to petition the
General Court for an abatement of colonial and Continental
taxes, “by reason of the Great losses this town hath met with
at sea, & being almost totally Deprived of the fishery since
the Present war.” On January i, 1781, in order to meet the
requisition for beef, they sold the town shipyard and town
lands. By July they had to “remenstrate” to the General
Court that it had become “out of our power to pay the Taxes
and procure the Clouthing, Provisions and Soldiers, requested
by the said Court,” and prayed for an abatement or remission.1
Indeed, by 1779 or 1780 New England was nearly bankrupt
and her men were heartily tired of the struggle.

Almost from the beginning, as we have said, it had been
difficult to get them to serve, not merely as volunteers but also
as paid soldiers or when drafted, and we may now examine a
little more closely the conditions which brought this about
even in that section of the country which more than any other
had insistently precipitated the conflict.

Uneasiness, discontent, and even open mutiny are apt to
result if the privates are not provided with officers whom they
can respect as officers, apart from any qualities that might make
them popular in civil life. Men who from their position or
occupation are accustomed to lead, or those from the lower
ranks who may develop that ability, are naturally in the minor¬
ity. Consequently, in a country which has no standing army
and trained officers, there is bound to be a dearth of such when
occasion suddenly arises for them. In this respect New Eng¬
land was particularly deficient, although it provided some good
officers among the higher ranks. The vain, popularity-hunting
John Hancock bitterly resented the fact that he was not chosen
commander-in-chief, but it was well for the cause that that
office was conferred upon the Virginian Washington, though
John Adams and some other New England leaders never for¬
gave the choice and remained opposed to Washington through¬
out the war.

In the beginning, the election of company officers by the men

1 Records of the Town of Plymouth, (Plymouth, 1903), vol. Ill, pp. 356 /., 383, 403,
429.

THE WAR

23

undoubtedly kept the quality low. Under that condition it
was almost impossible to maintain effective discipline, and a
man of spirit was not likely to be willing to hold his commission
at the whim of his own privates. Few New Englanders —
except sea captains, who naturally remained in naval service
of some sort — were accustomed to handling men. The farms
were mostly one-man affairs, run with the assistance of half-
grown sons or of one or two “hired help.” There were no
industrial plants employing more than a few hands. The New
Englanders of the lower classes had no experience in command¬
ing others or in submitting to discipline themselves. The
occupations of most of the better classes, such as merchants,
ministers, and lawyers in small communities, did not develop
as good material for the making of military officers as did the
life of the larger plantation-owners of the South, who were
accustomed to looking after numerous slaves and dependents
in the patriarchal existence of large isolated estates. As to
the inferior quality of New England officers at the beginning
of the war there would seem to be little doubt. We have al¬
ready seen Washington making “a pretty good slam among
such officers as the Massachusetts Government abound in,”
when he took command at Cambridge.1 Charles Lee, al¬
though praising the New England privates highly in 1775,
spoke of that section as being defective in materials for good
officers.2 Other observers noted the same fact, and Alexander
Graydon, a captain in the service, tried to analyze the reasons
for it in the early stages of the war, noting that later the New
England officers were as good as any from elsewhere. “Was
it,” he asks, “that the cause was popular only among the
yeomanry ? Was it, that men of fortune and condition there,
as in other parts of the continent . . . were willing to devolve
the fighting business on the poorer and humbler classes ? Was
it, in short, that they held the language of the world and said,

“ Let the gull’d fools the toils of war subdue,

Where bleed the many to enrich the few ? ” 3

1 Adams, Revolutionary New England , 1691-1776, p. 435.

2 Quoted by Bolton, Private Soldier, pp. 1 33/.

3 Memoirs, (Edinburgh, 1822), 2d edit., pp. 154/*

^4

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

This was a note frequently sounded, and the poor felt that
an undue share of the burden, both in taxation and personal
service and suffering, was being laid on their shoulders. It
was one of the many elements entering into that resentful
popular consciousness which formed the psychological back¬
ground of Shays's Rebellion a few years later.

Throughout the struggle, indeed, the lack of good officers
was felt in the entire army and such officers as came from
Europe, mostly from France, did not greatly improve the situa¬
tion. For one Lafayette or Steuben there were dozens of
foreigners who, as Washington wrote, “have nothing more than
a little plausibility, unbounded pride and ambition, and a
perseverance in application not to be resisted but by uncommon
firmness, to support their pretensions; men who, in the first
instance, tell you they wish for nothing more than the honor
of serving so glorious a cause as volunteers, the next day solicit
rank without pay, the day following want money advanced to
them, and in the course of a week want further promotion, and
are not satisfied with anything you can do for them.” 1 As
the years went on, the material was sifted and conditions be¬
came better, but in the earlier stages a good deal of discontent,
insubordination, and desertion may be traced to the officers.

There were, however, other causes which afforded ample
reason for the disinclination to serve long terms in the Con¬
tinental line. During the first year of the war, when the army
was in Massachusetts, its food supply was fairly abundant.
Later the conditions became deplorable, and during the winter
of 1777-78 there was no quartermaster-general for nearly six
months, the soldiers suffering severely from the inexcusable
confusion which resulted. At Valley Forge there was once no
bread for a week, and all provisions were so scanty that on
several occasions the troops almost mutinied.2 In February
1777 the speaker of the Massachusetts Senate, writing to El-
bridge Gerry of the great difficulty of recruiting, said that “the
men do not complain of the fatigues to which they have been
exposed, (which we know were very great), but the want of

1 Writings , (Ford), vol. VII, p. 117.

2 Hatch, Administration of the Revolutionary Army y p. 96.

THE WAR

25

things necessary to make them comfortable in clothing and sus¬
tenance. As to the latter, except flour and beef, they could
receive little of anything, not even in sickness more than in
health, save what they purchased of the sutler, who would
strip the poor soldier of his whole month’s wages of forty shil¬
lings for what he could have bought at home for 3s 4d. . . .
The scoundrel, who is too lazy to do the duty of a soldier him¬
self, and never was worth 20s in all his life before, made $3000
at Ticonderoga in one summer! This also I can prove.”1
A year later another correspondent wrote: “In plain terms,
’t is probable that the army will disperse if the commissary
department is so damnably managed.” 2 When Congress,
without money and without the means of raising any, tried the
plan of apportioning quotas of provisions to be supplied by the
several states, the plan failed utterly. In March 1780 there
was one of the frequent lapses of supplies and the army almost
dissolved. In May the men were on one-quarter to one-eighth
rations, and some of the officers lived on bread and water, giving
their supplies to the men.3

The situation as to clothing was, if anything, even worse.
In the beginning the troops had no distinctive dress, and Wash¬
ington provided them as far as possible with hunting-shirts,
long breeches, and gaiters. Although uniforms were adopted
later, the soldiers were frequently not clad in them, and the
buff-and-blue of popular pictures was never worn by any of
the New England troops.4 In December 1776 Washington
stated that many of his men were entirely naked and others so
thinly clad as to be unfit for service. The condition of a Rhode
Island regiment at Peekskill in the following summer was so
scandalous that the village people called it “ the Ragged, Lousy,
Naked regiment.” 5 At Valley Forge in the winter of 1777-78
there were nearly three thousand men unfit for duty at Christ¬
mas, and the number increased by another thousand in a month

1 J. T. Austin, Life of Elbridge Gerry , (Boston, 1828), vol. I, pp. 257 /.

2 Ibid., p. 247.

3 Hatch, op. cit ., pp. 106 /.

4 Bolton, op. cit., p. 91 ; J. C. Fitzpatrick, The Spirit of the Revolution , (Boston,
1924), chap. viii.

5 Bolton, op. cit., p. 99.

2 6

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

more. Washington complained bitterly that his men had
“been left to perish by inches with cold and nakedness.” For
lack of proper clothing they had to sit by their fires all night,
afraid to sleep lest they might freeze — as many did, and lost
legs or arms by amputation in consequence. Congress counted
upon the individual states to clothe their own men, and in this
respect Connecticut did notably well, her men being usually
well cared for. At Yorktown many of our troops were so nearly
naked that our French allies made jokes at the expense of their
nudity. The sufferings of the men were intense, especially in
the winter when they had to face freezing cold without clothes
and march over frozen ground without shoes.

The main trouble lay in the lack of organization and of any
central authority of real power. There was always ample
food in the country, could it have been obtained and trans¬
ported. Clothes, to some extent, had to be imported, but
with them, again, the question was of administration. In 1780
Washington wrote that “the situation of the Army in respect
to cloathing is really distressing, — By collecting all our rem¬
nants, and those of a thousand colors & kinds, we shall
scarcely make them comfortable. Uniformity, one of the es¬
sentials of discipline, everything in the appearance of a Soldier,
must be dispensed with ; — and what makes the matter more
mortifying is, that we have, I am positively assured Ten thou¬
sand compleat suits ready in France & laying there because
our public agents cannot agree whose business it is to ship
them. . . . You tell me there is cloathing enough lately
arrived in private bottoms to supply the army. — This my
dear Sir is only tantalizing the Naked — such is the miserable
state of the Continental credit that we cannot command a
yard of it.” 1

Nakedness, hunger, and the necessary hardships of camp
life and campaigning caused an immense amount of sickness
and mortality, but the hospital service was as inadequate as
the rest. Medical stores were frequently wholly lacking, and
the doctors had nothing to do but to watch the sufferings and
death of the men. Sanitation was but little understood and

1 Writings , (Ford), vol. IX, p. 51.

THE WAR

27

anaesthetics and antiseptics were unknown. Hospitals were

unpopular in the communities where they were established, and

the civilian populace frequently protested at the arrival of

sick soldiers.1 If a soldier had the misfortune to fall into the

hands of the enemy, although there were notable exceptions,

it was not seldom to suffer further privation or the tortures

of the prison ships, the horrible condition of which has been

vividlv described.2
*

But it was not merely these hardships which wrung the
soldiers’ hearts. They were not paid, and they felt with in¬
creasingly profound bitterness that, while they were suffering,
the people at home were not supporting them. Owing to the
depreciation in the paper money, prices advanced by leaps,
as we shall note in the next chapter, and even when the soldier
did receive a part of his promised pay it would purchase almost
nothing. “The soldier asks me,” wrote the speaker of the
Massachusetts Assembly quoted above, “when the state makes
the addition of a bounty of twenty pounds to the encourage¬
ment of congress, and individuals in the several towns add one
hundred to all this, (for I don’t know of more than two men of
the twelve companies in and about Andover that have been
procured under) what security he has, that he shall come home
a whit better at the end of the three years than he did at the
close of the last year, without a garment to his back or a farth¬
ing in his pocket ?” 3

The resentment of the soldiers rose as they compared their
condition and prospects with those of many of the civilians
at home, who were growing rich and suffering none of the hard¬
ships and dangers of military service. As in the last Great
War through which we have recently passed, the contrast was
most unjust between the man who went into service to suffer,
to be mutilated for life, or to die, for a mere pittance, and his
fellows at home who were getting high wages in comfort.
“Day labourers at home ought, in justice,” wrote the Connecti¬
cut Journal in 1778, “to labour at the old price, since their

1 Bolton, op. cit., p. 182.

2 Contemporary conditions in England are described by Francis Abell, Prisoners of
War in Britain , 1756 to /8iyy (Oxford University Press, 1914).

3 Austin, Gerry , vol. I, p. 258.

28

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

brethren in the army who are risquing their lives for the com¬
mon defence are paid at the old price. If labour at home rises,
the wages of the soldiers ought to rise, in justice; and must
be raised, in policy; or we can never get the army filled up.” 1
The taxes were heavy but, as we shall note later, so devised
as to fall heaviest upon the poor. Much larger sums could
have been raised had the rich and well-to-do been willing to
bear their burden. “Everybody, go where I will,” wrote
Colonel Timothy Pickering of Massachusetts, “is complaining
of heavy taxes; yet those paid the United States are to the
last degree insignificant. . . . These brave and deserving
soldiers, many of whom have fought for six years, exposed their
lives to save their country, who are unhappy enough to have
fallen sick, have for a month past been destitute of every com¬
fort of life . . . while the citizens of the United States indulge
a luxury to which before the war, they were strangers ! . . .
Would to God that, in a land blessed with the best food in
abundance, the army were not served with the worst ! that the
sick were not left to perish for want of wholesome diet, or with
the cold for want of proper clothing.” 2

In the minds of the soldiers, their own want of pay was closely
bound up with the sufferings of their families at home. The
bulk of the army was made up, as always, of those who could
least afford to lose their means of livelihood, and the want to
which their wives and children were exposed preyed constantly
on their minds and was one of the main causes of desertion.
The terrific uprush of prices for all the necessities of life, while
the wage-earners or farmers were serving in the army with little
or no pay, rendered the condition of their families desperate in
many cases. A correspondent signing himself “A Continental ”
wrote in 1777: “I ask the question, will your army continue
to defend you in the field, while their wives and their children
are famishing and crying for bread at home, through your
intolerable oppression ? or will they turn their arms against
you and do themselves justice?”3 “Almost two years have

1 Issue of Jan. 28, 1778.

20. Pickering, Life of Timothy Pickering , (Boston, 1867), vol. I, p. 376.

3 Conn . Couranti Nov. 25, 1777.

THE WAR

29

passed,” wrote Ebenezer Huntington from the army to his
father in Connecticut in 1778, “where we have been buoyed
up with Promises at Loose Ends by the people in General . . .
we doubt the Willingness of our Countrymen to Assist us.
You cannot blame us. Our money is gone, our friends are few,
or none who will lend us money. . . . You resolved in your
Last Session, that the Soldiers family should be supported,
whether they sent Money or not, but it is not done, nor will it
be done. Not a Day Passes my head, but some Soldier with
Tears in his Eyes hands me a letter to read from his Wife Paint¬
ing forth the Distresses of his Family in such strains as these
'I am without bread & Cannot get any, the Committee will
not Supply me, my Children will Starve, or if they do not, they
must freeze, we have no wood, neither can we get any — Pray
Come Homey Again, in 1780, he wrote: “I despise My
Countrymen. I wish I could say I was not born in America.
I once gloried in it but am now ashamed of it.” After describ¬
ing his own sufferings for lack of clothes and food, he said :
“And all this for my Cowardly Countrymen who flinch at the
very time when their Exertions are wanted, & hold their Purse
Strings as tho they would damn the World rather than part
with a Dollar to their Army.” The following year he again
wrote that the soldiers “have served you from the 1st of Jany
’77 & have received but just their wages for ’77, the rest is due.
. . . If we meet with such Treatment from you when our Ser¬
vices are so much wanted, what can we expect at the Close
of the Campaign (should it be Glorious). . . . Cloath feed
& Pay us & you may have any Services you wish . . . the
State at large don’t deserve freedom, nor no other People on
Earth, who are neither willing to Contend for Freedom Person¬
ally or for those who will defend their Cowardly Souls.” 1

That the morale of the army was maintained at all under
such conditions is extraordinary, and must be attributed to the
patriotism of the private soldier and the marvelous influence
of Washington’s character. There were occasional mutinies,
as well as much muttering, but these are not to be wondered

1 Letters Written by Ebenezer Huntington during the American Revolution, (New York,
I9H), PP- Ilf-, 87/., 93/.

30

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

at in so long a strain and with so much justified bitterness
against the inefficiency of legislators and the civilian popula¬
tion. On the whole, the morals of the men, as well as their
morale, seem to have been maintained at a high point. Com¬
ments upon the soldiers' relations with women and other matters
are by no means lacking, but are far fewer than one would
expect.

When the war was finally won and the independence of the
colonies acknowledged, it was after a struggle of such desolating
force as had been foreseen by none of the promoters of the
rebellion. They had hoped that, at the most, two or three
campaigns and perhaps the intervention of friendly allies,
combined with the usual back-down by Great Britain, would
end the matter. The old leaders in business, politics, and
society who were on the patriot side expected still to remain
in the saddle, and anticipated no change in the status of the
poorer and unenfranchised part of the population. Life was
to go on as before, only freer and more prosperous. The
flames of war, however, left no portion of that life untouched,
and against the lurid background of those years we see the
dark figures of misery and greed and discontent as well as the
nobler ones of patriotism and pure endeavor. It is well to
dwell for inspiration upon these latter ; but we cannot under¬
stand the period nor the events that followed solely from the
fervid outpourings of the orators or the high deeds of the chosen
few. We must turn to yet other aspects of the lives of the
silent millions who were forced by the struggle to face new hard¬
ships, new temptations, new problems, new conditions in every
phase of daily life. For it is, to a great extent, the dumb
tongues of the multitude that will one day speak the living
words of history.

CHAPTER II

ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF THE WAR

Scarcity of Food — High Prices — Depreciation of the Cur¬
rency — Attempts to Regulate Prices — State Currencies — Taxa¬
tion — Changes in Social Structure — Difficulties of Business —
Beginning of Manufactures — Rise of New Men — Agriculture
— Laboring Classes — Extravagance

In the last chapter we touched upon some of the changes and
hardships which were suffered by the men in the service, and
noted that before the years of conflict were over a large part
of the male population capable of bearing arms had been in
service for longer or shorter periods. In the army almost
everyone, officers as well as privates, suffered in one way or
another. This is always less true of the civilian population,
in which there is ever at such times of social upheaval certain
elements which are so situated and of such capacities as to be
able to take advantage of the general conditions and distress to
their own profit. In every war the two great classes to suffer
most are the poor and those who derive moderate fixed incomes
either from invested property yielding settled returns or from
salaries.

Except for certain manufactured goods, many luxuries, and
a few of the articles used for food, such as tea and sugar, the
colonies were to a great extent self-sustaining before the war
broke, and during its continuance there was little general dis¬
tress caused by the lack of any of the essential articles of con¬
sumption. The need for certain supplies for military use made
them scarce from the beginning, and many of them were placed
under the charge of the Board of War. One of these was lead
for bullets, and in Massachusetts requests were issued to the

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

3^

people to take the weights from their windows and turn them
in.1 The close supervision of the Board of War comes out now
and then in town records, such as those of Groton in 177 9,
when we find the town applying to the Massachusetts Council
for a box of glass to replace the broken windows in the school-
and meeting-houses, saying that the request had been passed
by the Board but that the glass could not be had without an
order of Council.2 But such matters caused no real hardship.
Most of the clothing, for example, worn by the poorer classes
and small farmers was homespun and of durable quality, and
a very large proportion of articles in use in the households being
of domestic manufacture saved the smaller folk from much of
the suffering which high prices would have caused in a more
complex industrial society.

In certain sections and at certain times food was scarce, but
this was exceptional. Such difficulties came mainly from dis¬
location of trade and trouble in distribution. In the seaboard
towns of Massachusetts, such as Beverly, the people felt
severely the almost complete destruction of the cod-fishery,
which at once took away their means of livelihood and a por¬
tion of their food. Early in 1777 George Williams wrote to
Colonel Pickering that “food is getting scarce and money
scarcer”; and two years later he again wrote that “in this
State on the sea-coast the inhabitants will soon have nothing
to eat,” and quoted some of the prevailing prices.3

In Rhode Island there had been a severe disturbance of the
population, owing to the British occupation of Newport, and
between two and three thousand people had removed from the
area of occupation to other sections of the small state or across
the borders of its neighbors.4 The difficulties of trade through
its ports and the fact that the colony had never been agricul¬
turally self-sustaining made special hardships for its inhabit¬
ants, who were dependent largely upon Connecticut. From
time to time embargoes were laid upon the export of food from

1 Alden Bradford, History of Massachusetts, (Boston, 1825), vol. II, p. 135.

2 S. A. Green, Groton during the Revolution , (Groton, 1900), p. 233.

3 Thorndike, “Beverly Privateers,” pp. 341, 355.

4 Commerce of Rhode Island , vol. II ; Mass. Hist. Soc., Coll., Ser. VII, vol. X, p. 51 ;
W. R. Staples, Rhode Island in the Continental Congress, (Providence, 1870), p. 76.

y

By ms EXCELLENC V.

^i) NATHAN T R U MB U L J^fcfquire*
Governor of the State of Come$S$t!gfaAmenca.

A PROCLAMA'TJOR

fV HJ&'R E A S the General Afembly of this SbafCy at their
Seffton at Hartford} in May lafl , Rejolved , Embargo

he forthwith laid Upon the* Exportation out efofffli $t<hef?y
Land or tVatcr , of the following Articles , viz.0Jfhd£t* RjVf .M
Mian-Corny Peai\ Beans , Oatsy Bread, Fldltry and every*

/ -fow ^ AfW, Porky Beefy Live Cattle , Sheep Swine, ftum,
pT /tSugary MolajfeSy Salt ± Bar Irony 'TEooly F/a^, woollen ami
^jfe jfflnen Clothy tanned Leather and Shoes , (except necejfatty Sea
Jpf Stores for V tffels outward-houndy and except £&&tley ptyodffi-

^ ^ Cloathing pur chafed or to he purchase dp or procured

j and font for thelJfe of the Army or for thrfvfvy belonging .

5 to this S tatey and not to hinder any particular P erf on or Perfons
affront carrying or fending to fitch Soldiers in the Anny as may '
he under the Care add f pedal Relation of fucfyPerfony any *

%• necejfary Cloathing or Provifon they t'iay want for their own *
Ufe and Confumptionjy and faid Embargo to continue in Force
until oth&rwife ordered : and faid Affembly have requefled me
t to ijfue : aff reclamation Apdphibit in g juck *, Exportation accor-

. '*»&> X , ' ’ t *T ; ' ; f '

. f { i I % „ ; Jf *

IT DO.thcrcforc^iii.pMT^rrce ofcthe faid General

Aflembly, ifllie; this lProdam^tion,^hwel^notifying all
JL ^tj^rfons, that Tu^h tEifiSirgo is laid, aftdtfre^uiring them to
'coipply therewith.' Aal:I db hereby ftfi^llytopohibit all Perfonfc

> : (with but* fpecial . Licence from tlje Governor; and Council of
r xiSafetyj from tranfpbrtijigor exporting from 1 tl^s State, by Land

• ;or* Wat^, and* from ^hippjjpg“fo| Tranfportation, driving or

* ‘' dairying atiy of faid Articles, (jexbep tiftgionly^as in faid Rcfolve

;is5xcepted)tun4|r Jh^Pairis and Penal t)&qjf the Law, id fuch

► . Cafe provided. vAnd% do hereby require abd-enjoin all proper
ofe^rs^and otlilr Perjbns to ^xe.ft themfelvcs, that faid Rdpjhfb . .

1 Tettedually x:drrfed7n to Execution. * -AfgrfX

^ ^ % A. I . V A*

/•

# .

f

cgVEN un ^erln^ Hand at ^hfnoity %i.^aid State, tl}i/f I qth
* Day of Jfndy Anno f>omiru, One Tijio^fand Seven Hundred

??*£-

f

i

• and Seventy Eight!

"'jV
/ /

A

■joi”.
» ▼ . .•

TRUMD&.L. :

‘ '-fc

V ‘

! NJE.IT- LONDON : Panted by T*. Printer to t|c

- • 4 > 7 • * v* ' ' I

Gcvernor and Co.wf a^V-

Proclamation of Governor Trumbull, 1778

Library of Congress

34

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

the several states, and in 1779 Governor Greene wrote to Con¬
gress that it was totally out of the power of the Rhode Island
government to provide the people with bread, owing to scarcity
of wheat. “Nearly one-quarter of the best plow land is now
in possession of the enemy,” he wrote, “and other considerable
tracts are so exposed, that the occupiers have not dared, nor
been able, to plant them for two years past.” He complained
of the strict embargo from the “southern and western states,”
and said that the only outside supply came in small quantities
from Massachusetts, Connecticut having repeatedly declined
to allow any.1 In the larger towns, such as Boston, which
always depended upon the surrounding country, there was also
difficulty at times ; but for the great mass of the people the
main suffering came from the greatly enhanced prices of all the
necessaries of life.

At first a real scarcity in some lines, and throughout the war
the increased cost of doing business, accounted in part for the
advance. High insurance rates, the risks of capture by the
enemy, and the necessarily increased rate of profit on such goods
as did get through from Europe and the West Indies raised the
prices of all imported articles. In the North, because agricul¬
ture was practised mainly on small farms tilled by the owner
and his family and because many of the articles used by the
common people were made at home, the absence of the men of
the family in the services naturally tended to decrease produc¬
tion, increase wages, and enhance prices. Speculation also
played its part. In any case, the factors always present in the
abnormal economic situation of war time would have raised the
whole cost of living.

But as the war progressed, the main factor in carrying prices
to the fantastic heights which they reached was the deprecia¬
tion of the Continental and State currencies. The trouble
started almost at once. As early as January 1776 a writer who
signed himself “Farmer” wrote that “tis rendered impossible

1 R. /. Records , vol. VIII, p. 498. In other letters he stated that one third of the
land was in possession of the British. Ibid.y p. 499. In response to the appeal, Con¬
necticut allowed 7000 bushels of grain to be exported, and contributions were sent both
of money and of food.

ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF THE WAR

35

for some, and extremely difficult for others to pay their debts.”
Should payment be enforced by the usual legal process, he
added, it would be injurious to many, ruin some, and might be

productive of great disorders in the state. 1 6 Oil 30
The following month, in Massachusetts, a committee was
appointed of representatives in the General Court to consider
the question of high prices and recommend action. For some
months after, petitions flowed in complaining of extortionate
charges and praying for legislation.1 2 In December, William
Ellery, then one of Rhode Island’s representatives in the Con¬
tinental Congress at Philadelphia, wrote to the Governor that
prices there had risen between one and two hundred per cent
in less than two years, owing to depreciation in the currency,
the limitation of commerce, and the speculation in the neces¬
saries of life by wealthy men.3 He expressed the hope that the
situation had not become so critical in his home state. A\-
though — if his estimate of the rise in Philadelphia was correct
— the conditions in New England were not quite so bad, they
had become sufficiently so to warrant the call by Massachu¬
setts for a convention of delegates from the several states of
that section to meet at Providence in the same month in which
Ellery wrote. The original instructions from Massachusetts
to its delegates comprehended only the regulation of the cur¬
rencies of the several states admitted to Congress, but were
enlarged before the meeting so as to include the placing of
embargoes on exports from each state, the prevention of monop¬
olies, the fixing of prices, and other matters. Massachusetts
itself had prohibited exports of food and lumber from its borders
earlier in the year.4 The convention, with representatives
from all four New England states, met at Providence the 25th
of December, and on the 31st reported a list of prices which
they recommended should go into effect throughout all New

1 Conn. Courant , Jan. 29, 177 6.

2 The situation in Massachusetts can be conveniently followed in the article by
A. McF. Davis, “The Limitation of Prices in Massachusetts, 1776—1779,” Col. Soc.
Mass., Publications , vol. X, pp. 1 19-134.

3 Rhode Island in the Continental Congress , op. cit.y p. 105.

4 “Limitation of Prices,” op. cit.y p. 120. The text of the report is in R. I. Records ,
vol. VIII, pp. 85 ff.

3^

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

England, and which included almost everything except real
estate. The recommendations were adopted by the state
legislatures the following year.

As might have been expected, the attempt to regulate prices
by law met with but little success. “The complaint of oppres¬
sion and extortion has been made, not only from your press but
almost every press on the continent, and scarcely a tongue has
been silent on the subject,” wrote a correspondent in Connecti¬
cut.1 Rufus King wrote from Cambridge in March that the
price-fixing Acts had reduced many Massachusetts towns to
great distress. Of the town from which he wrote he said : “No
Provisions brought to market. No Wood. In Boston three
days past I saw numbers of Families removing into the Country
— was told by a Gentleman acquainted with the Town’s Situa¬
tion that he imagined more than an hundred Families in the
town were that day entirely destitute of Fuel, except such as
they rummaged from the stores in Town. Those who were in
Boston thro’ the siege, say they never at any time were in a
worse situation for Fuel and Provisions. The clamours of the
populace are loud and must be attended to. By information
from Connecticut I learn they are in much the same Situation.”2
The Connecticut Courant , indeed, was filled with complaints,
and in April, in accordance with the new scale of prices then in
effect, the subscription of that journal was raised fifty per cent.3

In spite of laws intended to prevent “engrossing and fore¬
stalling,” prices rose steadily. The “engrosser,” as he was then
called, was the speculator who attempted to control the mar¬
ket by the purchase of the available supply, whereas the
“forestaller” attempted to do the same thing by buying the
goods before they reached the market. Throughout the war,
speculation for the rise in all sorts of goods and commodities
was rampant. On the first of January, I777> gold commanded
a premium of only five per cent over the Continental bills, but
by October it required two hundred and seventy-five dollars
in bills to buy one hundred in gold ; by the first of January, 1778,

1 Conn. Courant , March 17, 1777.

2 C. R. King, Life and Correspondence of Rufus King , (New York, 1894), vol. b P* 25.

3 Conn. Courant , April 28, 1777.

ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF THE WAR

37

the figure had risen to three hundred and twenty-five ; a year
later to seven hundred and forty-two; by the first of January,
1780, it had reached two thousand and thirty-four; and three
months later it had climbed to four thousand. Under such
conditions it is little wonder that prices rose with startling
rapidity, and that it was impossible to make merchants and
others adhere to the schedules fixed by the legislatures.

Now and then the people took matters into their own hands,
and in Boston, in the summer of 1777, “there had been much
rout and noise in the town for several weeks.” Apparently
the merchants had on hand great quantities of coffee and sugar
which they were holding for an advance. The high prices and
the artificial scarcity aroused the public, and the men seemingly
having been impotent in the crisis, one hundred women marched
on the store of one of the leading merchants and demanded his
keys. On his refusal he was unceremoniously tossed into a
cart, and when he capitulated the store was entered and the
triumphant housewives went off with their coffee.1 A similar
incident occurred a few months later in Beverly, in which the
women were again the aggressors and victors, and by attacking
a warehouse and carrying off two hogsheads of sugar forced the
merchants to sell at the fixed prices.2

Just at the time that the housewives of Boston were securing
their coffee by their own simple but effective methods, another
convention of delegates from the four colonies and their neigh¬
bor New York were preparing to meet at Springfield. Begin¬
ning their sittings on the 30th of July, they considered the
cognate questions of currency, taxes, and prices. Roger Sher¬
man, of Connecticut, who was in favor of carrying on the war
as much as possible by means of taxation and providing the
balance by foreign loans, stated that the crops were plentiful
and that the people could pay larger taxes than theretofore.3
In some respects this convention seems to have been the most
conservative and the soundest in economic doctrine of the sev¬
eral held in the war years. Although its members advocated

1 Letters of Mrs. Adams , op. cit., vol. I, p. 109.

2 Thorndike, “Beverly Privateers," op. cit., pp. 37i/.

3 L. H. Boutell, The Life of Roger Sherman , (Chicago, 1896), p. 104.

3&

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

laws for the prohibition of speculative dealings in commodities,
they did not believe in the possibility or advisability of fixing
prices by law, and suggested the repeal of all such legislation.
On every side the failure of the effort to hold down prices had
brought disappointment and disgust, and the Massachusetts
legislature not only repealed all price-regulating laws but those
against forestalling and engrossing as well.

The agitation against high prices, however, continued. There
seems to have been plenty of food in the country districts, as
Sherman said, but the towns suffered. In March of the follow¬
ing year (1778), at a Boston town-meeting, it was resolved that :
“One Great Reason of the present Excessive Price of Provisions
in this Town arises from the Avarice, Injustice and Inhumanity
of certain Persons within Twenty Miles of it, who purchase
great Part of the same of Farmers living at a greater Distance
and put an exhorbitant Advance upon it.” 1 The “meatless
days” of our own recent experience in the Great War were fore¬
cast in the suggestion that the richer citizens should not only
subscribe for the relief of the poor, but “on no Occasion whatever
have more than Two Dishes of Meat on the same Day on their
Table,” and that they should avoid the use of poultry and have
two fish dinners a week.

Meanwhile Congress had taken the matter into its own
hands and had divided the states into three groups, of which
the northern included the New England ones and those as far
south as Delaware. It was recommended that each group hold
a convention for the purpose of regulating prices of labor and
commodities, and of providing for the seizure of goods in the
hands of the speculators. The northern convention was held
at New Haven in January 1778, all the states being represented
but Delaware. Although specific prices were set on certain
goods, the convention ruled that, in general, prices for labor
and commodities should both be set at an advance of seventy-
five per cent over those prevailing in 1774.2

The scale was adopted by several of the states, including Con-

1 Quoted in “Limitation of Prices,” op. cit., p. 125.

2 S. E. Baldwin, “The New Haven Convention of 1778,” New Haven Colony Hist.
Soc., Coll., vol. Ill, pp. 32-62.

ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF THE WAR

39

necticut, but not by Massachusetts. To some extent the reg¬
ulating Acts which were passed in accordance with the sugges¬
tions of the convention seem to have been effective. In March,
for example, it was reported from Hartford that the innkeepers
and many of the retailers, “together with a number of respect¬
able merchants” in that and other towns, had entered into the
spirit of the Act and were “now disposing of their dear bought
goods at the stated prices.” “A patriotic example! and as
deserving of praise ,” adds the writer, “as the opposite is
infamy .” 1 On the other hand, there is ample evidence that
many merchants, and the people at large, paid scant attention
to the legislative prices. “The operation of the State Bill,”
wrote David Lopez, Jr., the Rhode Island merchant, “renders
Business still extremely dull and perplexing, tho’ with us it has
the appearance of a very short duration, our markets being
badly provided, and scarce any attention paid to the regula¬
tions by those who expose their articles for sale. At Boston
its dictates seem to be but little better regarded. On applica¬
tion for the Velvetts which I advised you were offer’d me at
£6 per yard, I was told they were sent to that market and read¬
ily sold for £9. Dry goods instead of descending 20 per Ct.
keep daily rising, and have become very scarce.” 2

Governor Trumbull and many of the leading men were op¬
posed to such interference with the natural laws of trade. “If
we affix a low price to provisions, and articles of importation,”
wrote the Governor, “we shall find that the Farmer will cease
to till the Ground for more than is necessary for his subsistence,
and the Merchant to resign his Fortune on a small and precari¬
ous prospect of gain.” 3

Complaints of the high prices continued and constant de¬
mands were made in Massachusetts for the passage of laws
against the speculators. “If a market-man is allow’d to ask
any price he thinks fit, having nothing but his own rapacity
and our necessity to govern him,” wrote one Boston complain¬
ant, “the whole property of this town may in a little time be

1 Boston Gazette , March 30, 1778.

2 Letter of Sept. 16, 1779, Rhode Island Commerce , vol. II, p. 69.

3 1. W. Stuart, Life of Jonathan Trumbull , 6V., (Boston, 1859), p. 418.

4°

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

drawn away by purchasing a few potatoes , and a few other nec¬
essaries of life.” 1 Meanwhile, Congress had again recom¬
mended the states to take action against the speculators, and
in February Massachusetts passed an Act directed against
them. Its terms, however, when compared with the far more
drastic legislation regulating the amount of food which might
be purchased or in the possession of individuals in the recent
Great War, would indicate that there was no real scarcity.
Bakers, for example, were permitted to buy a three months'
supply of flour, and a private family was allowed to have on
hand a year’s supply both of that commodity and of meat.2

The real trouble was depreciation. By April 1779, Conti¬
nental bills had fallen to $121 in bills for $1 in coin and the
“flight,” as we have come to term it, from the rapidly depreciat¬
ing currency was in full progress. Private efforts supplemented
those of the legislatures. In June the merchants of Boston
met and agreed to limit prices after July first to those prevail¬
ing in May, provided the other towns would concur. A con¬
vention of the eastern towns was held at Concord in June and
agreed upon a scale of prices, but there were no means of enforce¬
ment. Individual towns adopted their scales and attempted to
enforce them by extra-legal means. No bulwarks, however,
could stand against the rising floodof paper money. In October
a convention of the New England states and New York met at
Hartford and decided that the previous failure to regulate prices
was due to the currency. As Congress had set a limit of
$200,000,000 to the issues, it was thought that the final depre¬
ciation might be determined and a new scale inaugurated. A
larger convention, including more states, met at Philadelphia
in January 1780. In March, however, Congress declared that
the Continental money was worth only one fortieth of its face
value, and recommended that the several states call in their
quotas of it, issuing new money on the basis of one for forty.
Following this repudiation of $3900 out of every $4000, the
states in general returned to a specie basis, and prices thereafter
were left to take care of themselves.

1 Boston Gazette , Sept. 14, 1778.

2 “Limitation of Prices,” op. cit p. 126.

ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF THE WAR

41

In all the colonies there was a great mass of legislation deal¬
ing with one aspect or another of the cost of living. It would
be as impossible as it is unnecessary to specify the Acts in detail.
The town records all tell the same story — that of attempting
to restrain the inevitable upward course of prices, which was
working havoc among all who were not self-sustaining or them¬
selves benefiting from speculation for the rise.1 Almost every
household felt the strain. “I blush whilst I give you a price
current,” wrote Mrs. John Adams to her husband, then in
France. “All butcher’s meat from a dollar to eight shillings
per pound ; corn twenty-five dollars, rye thirty per bushel,
flour fifty pounds per hundred, potatoes ten dollars a bushel
. . . labor six and eight dollars a day; a common cow, from
sixty to seventy pounds; and all English goods in proportion.
This is our present situation. It is a risk to send anything
across the water, I know ; yet, if one in three arrives, I should
be the gainer. I have studied, and do study, every method of
economy in my power ; otherwise a mint of money would not
support a family.” 2

The mass of Continental paper was not the only currency
evil with which the colonists had to contend. As we have
noted in the previous volumes, all the New England colonies
had tried experiments in paper money, although at the begin¬
ning of the war all of them except Rhode Island had become
settled on a specie basis. The colonists were always averse to
taxation, not merely without representation but on principles
of pure selfishness. In an era when the nature of money and
currency was understood by only a few, it was far easier and
more popular to set the printing press to work than the tax-
gatherer. The war during its continuance was, therefore,
financed mainly by paper money and not by taxes, both by the
Continental Congress, which had no power to levy, and by the
separate states. In New Hampshire the local state money had
sunk to about one third of its nominal value by the beginning

1 Of-* e-g-> A. P. Marvin, History of the Town of Lancaster, (Lancaster, 1879), p. 307.
“Regulation of Prices in Hingham,” Col. Soc. Mass., Publications , vol. X, pp. 116 ff.\
The subject may be traced in almost all the better town histories and the records.

2 Letters, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 135/.

42

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

of 1778 and to one eighth by its close.1 At that time the state
had about £151,000 of its own notes outstanding, and this
was increased in the following two years by loans of £370,000
more, which probably found their way into circulation as cur¬
rency.

At the end of 1774 Massachusetts was out of debt, but in
May 1775 the Provincial Congress emitted £130,000 in bills of
credit, and other issues followed so rapidly that by the close of
the war there were probably about £1,500,000 in circulation.2
Connecticut tried to be more conservative, but between April
1775 and May 1780 that state issued £455,000 in notes, of
which £100,000 may have been redeemed in exchange for
subsequent issues within the period.3 These state bills cir¬
culated with the Continental money and fluctuated to a con¬
siderable extent with it, depreciating rapidly.

The most serious situation developed in Rhode Island, where
it had political and social consequences of importance, which
will be mentioned in a later chapter. The paper-money mania
in that colony greatly alarmed its neighbors, and as early as
April 1777 a correspondent of Elbridge Gerry wrote that
“Rhode Island in particular must be watched most narrowly,
or she will drown New England in paper.” 4 The expenses of
the Rhode Island government for the years immediately pre¬
ceding the Revolution had not much exceeded £2000 a year,
but in 1775 and 1776 the increase due to the war and the un¬
willingness to resort to taxation resulted in issuing £150,000 of
paper. In the next three years $1,150,000 was added to this,
and beginning with October 1780, $200,000 per month in paper
had to be issued to meet the quota of the state as apportioned
by Congress for the expenses of the struggle. Owing to the
British occupation, the little state, with a population of only

1 C. J. Bullock, Essays on the Monetary History of the United States , (New York, 1900),
p. 267.

2 C. J. Bullock, “Sketch of the Finances and Financial Policy of Massachusetts,
1780-1905,” American Economic Association, Publications , Ser. Ill, vol. VIII, No. 2,
1907, p. 6.

3 H. Bronson, “A Historical Sketch of the Connecticut Currency, Continental Money
and the Finances of the Revolution,” New Haven Colony Hist. Soc., Papers , vol. I,
p. 87.

4 Austin, Gerry , vol. I, p. 220.

ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF THE WAR

43

about fifty-five thousand, had suffered more severely than any
other in New England. Her commerce was almost at a stand,
and there was no means of absorbing the flood of paper which
poured steadily from the press.1

It is impossible to determine whether the refusal to pay for
at least the larger part of the war-cost by taxation was due to
inability or a mere disinclination to pay. The steady decline
in the currency was in itself a heavy tax, though this was not
realized. As we shall see later, there was much money being
made during the conflict by those able to take advantage of the
conditions, and the calculating business man or speculator was
better able to protect himself against loss through the depre¬
ciating circulating medium than were the other classes. In
addition to mulcting the public in this way, the states did levy
a certain amount of taxes during the war, though probably
much less than they might have. Perhaps the taxes that bore
most heavily on the people were those of the towns, which both
taxed themselves and also ran heavily into debt for the bounties
to soldiers, the care of their families, and other charges, as we
have noted, for example, in Plymouth.

In any case, aside from what was derived from foreign loans,
the people paid the cost of the war, whether in the form of
taxes or in the more indirect form of loss on account of the
depreciation and partial repudiation of the currency. The
question was partly one of psychology, as to how the people
preferred to pay, and partly one of class interest, as to who
should pay. The incidence of taxation during this period has
not yet received that careful study which it deserves and which
would provide us with the key to the problem. There is no
question but that great injustice was wrought by such taxation
as there was. There is ample evidence to show that this bore
most heavily upon the poorer classes. For example, the poll
tax in Massachusetts accounted for nearly one third of the
total amount of money raised, and this naturally was a much
more severe burden upon the poor man than upon the rich. In
fact, nearly all the taxes seem to have been arranged so as to

1 Vide E. R. Potter and S. S. Rider, Some Account of the Bills of Credit or Paper
Money of Rhode Island , (Providence, 1880).

44

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

fall upon those least able to bear them, though we cannot tell
how far this may have been due to design and how far to ig¬
norance. There was so much discussion of the matter, how¬
ever, that it cannot have been wholly due to the latter. In
1777, Robert Treat Paine, one of the delegates from Massa¬
chusetts to Congress, complained to Gerry that his state had
just begun taxation by a levy of £105,000, and that the ex¬
penses of the towns had been so great, owing to soldiers’ bo¬
nuses, that the local taxes would equal the state tax. The main
evil, he said, was that the war had completely altered the dis¬
tribution of property, and the incidence of the taxes was there¬
fore very inequitable. While some people were heaping up
wealth, most of them were jogging on in the old way under
great difficulties. “Cannot some mode be hit upon,” he asked,
“to draw money by taxation from those who are really the
possessors of it ?” 1

In Connecticut the system of taxation was antiquated and
very unequal. “According to our present mode,” wrote a
complainant to the Connecticut Journal , “an house with so
many fire-places, and such a quantity of land, whether it be in
town or country, good or poor, is equally taxed ... it is
undoubted truth of fact, that thousands of the poorer sort,
whose whole estate is not worth more than 3 or 400, pay as
large a tax as others, whose estate is worth 4 or 5000 pounds.” 2
He pointed out that this would be the ruin of “more than a
third part of the families in the state, whose lands must imme¬
diately fall into the hands of the richer for money to pay their
rates.” In Rhode Island, owing to the occupation of Newport
and other parts of the state by the British, the taxes had to be
borne by only a part of the community, and there, again, the
poll tax, which was eight shillings in 1777, must have weighed
heavily on the impoverished lower classes.3

In all discussion of the question of taxes during the period
of the war and the trying years of threatened social upheaval
which followed, we may again emphasize that it was a question

1 Austin, Gerry , vol. I, p. 221.

2 Issue of April 8, 1778.

3 R. /. Records , vol. VIII, pp. 150, 176.

ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF THE WAR

45

rather of incidence than of amount of taxation. By 1781 and
1782 the newspapers were filled with articles on this question,
and it is evident that the situation was becoming serious in all
the New England states, though the taxes were lighter in Ver¬
mont than elsewhere. Evidences of class feeling in this matter
became numerous. In Connecticut it was stated that although
the “middling people” were hardest pressed by the new taxes,
the complaints did not come from them but from those who
had grown rich in the war; and this note is sounded with
increasing frequency.1

Before the war, in spite of the growing feeling between classes
and the increasing discontent which we noted in the preceding
volume, the social order had been a comparatively stable one.
It was largely agricultural, and the farming element was the
backbone of all the New England colonies. In the towns the
merchants were the social and not seldom the political leaders.
Among the professional classes, the clergy, well intrenched,
occupied the most prominent position, but both doctors and
lawyers had in recent years been coming to hold a more recog¬
nized professional status. Everywhere, both in town and in
country, the “old families” and the higher social classes main¬
tained a position of recognized superiority, which was felt
throughout the entire life of their communities. Their influ¬
ence among their neighbors and the narrow basis of the fran¬
chise had enabled them, as a rule, to control the political situa¬
tion for their own interests, and in many respects New England
was more aristocratic, perhaps we may say snobbish, than was
the South.

To a great extent this structure of society, so comfortable
for the elect, was rudely disturbed by the war. In a consider¬
able degree this was due to the changed economic position of
the former rich — who had also become subject to pressure
from the war profiteers — and the democratic elements among
the people. These latter had not only learned to make their
grievances heard, but had acquired newr ones. All methods of
earning a living or accumulating wealth were thrown into con¬
fusion at the opening of the conflict. The difficulty of securing

1 Conn. Courant , June 11, 1782.

46 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

labor and the rapidly changing prices due to the currency
completely upset the stability of agriculture. The fisheries
were shut down at once. Foreign commerce had to be wholly
altered in character. The people who lived on fixed incomes
from investments were in many cases ruined by the rise in
prices and the fall in money. On the other hand, new methods
of gaining wealth quickly came into vogue, and those who
were shrewd or unscrupulous enough to profit by them rose
rapidly to the top.

The furnishing of the army with all its necessary supplies
immediately opened enormously profitable channels of business
and speculation. The size of such contracts and the haste with
which they have to be fulfilled under the strain and pressure of
war always make the opportunity for excess profits. Specula¬
tors, as ever, at once took advantage of the nation's predica¬
ment. However patriotic the motives for entering the war
may have been, business was business, and fortunes were piled
up rapidly by those who served their country in the capacity of
contractors. Congress complained in 1777 that in every state
persons “instigated by the lust of avarice” were assiduously
endeavoring to accumulate enormous gains for themselves at
the expense of the rest of the community and to the detriment
of the public service. The very magnitude of the field which
war opens to private gain stimulates greed on the part of even the
more reputable elements in the community, while the irrespon¬
sible and unscrupulous do their best to reap their harvest.

Operations were conducted on both large and small scales.
We have already noted the case of a common sutler in the
army who, not worth twenty shillings when he started, accumu¬
lated $3000 in one summer. Andrew Craigie, of Boston, who
became Apothecary-General, blossomed out at the close of the
war as a wholesale merchant with ample capital in New York
and became one of the heavy speculators in Government securi¬
ties.1 In November 1777, the firm of Otis & Andrews of Bos¬
ton were appointed Collectors of Clothing for the army and
added contracting in very large amounts to their mercantile

1 J. S. Davis, Essays in the Earlier History of American Corporations^ (Harvard Uni¬
versity Press, 1917), vol. I, p. 140.

ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF THE WAR

47

business. At the beginning of July 1778 the firm wrote to the
quartermaster-general that they had sent on in seven months
between sixteen and eighteen thousand suits of clothes, besides
shirts, hats, shoes, blankets, and other material, and that the
United States had been owing them nearly £200,000 lawful
money.1 That such contracts must have been extremely profit¬
able is indicated by a letter from Otis to his brother, himself a
member of the local committee on clothing, in which he advises
him that on “winter goods” he may “as well make 100 per
cent as 5 as they grow exceedingly scarce and will be at 20 for
one in a short time.” 2 “Business is business,” and culture
and high social position call for a firm substructure of cash on
hand, but it is worth while, when We have to consider the dis¬
content of the so-called lower classes in 1786, to think of such
men as even the Otises, safe out of harm's way in comfortable
rooms in Boston, figuring whether they should make one or
two hundred per cent out of the soldiers' winter clothes, and
to contrast them with the soldiers themselves, shivering and
naked at Valley Forge, dying of cold and starvation.

The prosperity of the old mercantile firms varied greatly.
Merchants had to adapt themselves quickly to wholly altered
conditions, and some were able to do this, whereas others were
not. A very large part of the New England trade had been
with England, and more particularly the English West Indies.
This trade was, of course, cut off* by the war. Nevertheless,
large quantities of English and West Indian goods found their
way into the states. Indeed, the supply of the latter must
have become very plentiful by 1779, for their prices were then
falling “very rapidly” in Rhode Island and Boston, although
the prices of other goods were still rising.3 Apparently large
amounts of English goods were smuggled in by way of Nova
Scotia, the export figures for English ports showing such heavy
increases in shipments to that colony as to indicate subsequent
clandestine entry into the United States.4

1 S. E. Morison, Life and Letters of Harrison Gray Otis , (Boston, 1913), vol. I, p. 21.

2 Ibid., p. 22.

3 R. I. Commerce , vol. II, p. 63.

4 E. R. Johnson etal.y History of Domestic and Foreign Commerce of the United States ,
(Washington, 1915), p. 122.

4§

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

Scattered references in private letters of the period indicate
the difficulties with which any commerce was carried on. Ow¬
ing to the activities of British privateers, the coasting trade
was almost wholly suspended. In 1779 the representatives of
Rhode Island in Congress wrote to the Governor that “the
whole coast from New York to South Carolina is so infested
with privateers as to render commerce exceedingly precari¬
ous,” 1 and the insurance rates quoted from time to time suggest
the risks taken. In the autumn of 1776 John Bradford re¬
ported to Robert Morris that he could find no one at either
Boston or Salem who would take the chance of insuring any
vessel bound to Virginia.2 Insurance rates in England for
American ports, which before the war had been as low as two
per cent, rose to thirty per cent for vessels sailing with convoy
and fifty for those sailing alone.3 Early in 1778 Bradford again
reported to Morris from Boston that the insurance officers
there had decided “not to take any more Risque, which will
Induce the Adventurers to lay up their Vessells as they arrive.” 4
Later, thirty-five per cent in Massachusetts and Rhode Island
v/as considered moderate, and the merchant Champlin wrote
from Newport that if he could not insure his vessel on a trip
from Philadelphia to Havana and back to Newport for less than
forty per cent he would assume the risk himself.5

The merchants also suffered from the scarcity of men to man
their vessels, the sailors preferring the greater chances of gain
in privateering. Bradford’s letters all during the war are filled
with complaints of the inability to man vessels and get them
off. “Sailors are so very Scarce and Wages so intolerable
high,” is his constant refrain.6 “The difficulty of getting
Vessels to Sea, from this Port is almost insuperable,” he wrote
again; and in May 1778 he noted that two fine ships, fitted
out at enormous expense, had had to be dismantled and hauled
up again because they could not be manned.7 Interest rates

1 Staples, Rhode Island in the Continental Congress , p. 210.

2 Bradford’s Letter Book, (Mss. Library of Congress), Sept. 23, 1776.

3 Maclay, Privateers , p. xiii. Cf. Boutell, Sherman , p. 100.

4 Letter Book, op. cit ., March 16, 1778.

5 R. I. Commerce , vol. II, p. 160.

6 Letter Book, op. cit., Aug. 7, 1777. 7 Ibid., March 4, 1778, April 28, 1778.

ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF THE WAR

49

were also very high, and a reputable Newport merchant stated
that he was paying twenty-four per cent on a loan and expected
the rate to be advanced to thirty. Moreover, the prices of
goods varied greatly, depending upon the arrivals of vessels,
and the failure of expected cargoes caused rapid rises. In
June 1778 Bradford reported that “lately scarce any inward
bound Vessells have escaped the Enemy,” and the following
January that there had been hardly any arrivals for two
months, so that the price of West India goods had advanced
very greatly.1 When we add to all these difficulties and un¬
certainties the constant and violent alterations in prices due to
the currency depreciation, it is evident that the change in busi¬
ness had become so great as to call for different qualities from
those possessed by most of the peace-time merchants of the
old type. Commerce had become mere speculation, although
the profits were correspondingly large when made.

Many merchants turned frankly to privateering as offering
no more risk and some advantages. It was far easier to get
men to serve on privateers than on merchant ships, and the
possible profits in capturing other people's cargoes were greater
than in carrying one’s own. The privateers were owned by
private individuals and firms, and not seldom by groups of
persons known as the “propriety,” who were interested in one
or more vessels on shares. Such was the case, for example, in
the General Sullivan, which was owned by a group of ten New
Hampshire men.2 These contributed between them a little
over £10,000 lawful money to the enterprise in 1777, and the
following year one prize alone was distributed of a value of
£168,400. It was customary for the officers and crews to
share in the prize money in definite proportions, and not only
these shares, but even small fractions of them, came to be
traded in like stock certificates and offered a medium of specu¬
lation for the smallest purses.3 It is uncertain whether wages
were paid or not in addition to the prize money.

1 Letter Book, op. cit ., June 24, 1778, Jan. 6, 1779.

2 “Privateer General Sullivan, 1777-1780,” Mss. volume in Library of Congress
consisting of Articles of Agreement, accounts, etc.

3 “Beverly Privateers,” op. cit., pp. 353/.

5o

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

In the early years the ventures seem to have been largely
successful, so that Bradford reported in November 1777 that
the price of vessels had risen to high figures and that they were
being bought principally by “the successful Adventurers in
privateers. ” 1 A few months later he made the interesting
statement that the cost of ships had then climbed still higher,
owing to the unlimited prices paid by the French merchants.
“When the Frenchmen here are glutted,” he wrote, “we may
expect to buy them at par; but they stick at no price, and
truly while they sell their Goods at such an exhorbitant ad¬
vance they may afford to give double the Value of a Vessell,
one of that Class of Men the other Day gave £6100 for the
Lady Gage formerly employed between London and York.” 2
The Boston Gazette and other papers were filled with stories
of captures, but occasionally we get glimpses of some of the
risks run. Thus in January 1777 we read that another prize
taken by the Alfred had arrived at Boston, “after having been
re-taken by a British frigate, and again captured by an Ameri¬
can cruizer.” 3 The following month it was reported that
“Capt. Dowse’s Crew had rose upon him, and ran away with
his Vessel,”4 a proceeding which seems to have happened in
more cases than this, so nearly akin was privateering to open
piracy — as it had been in the earlier Seven Years’ War. In
fact, even the Continental vessels were not above capturing
American ships for prize money, and in 1779 Aaron Lopez of
Newport had three of his ships so taken. One was adjudged
to him promptly by “a reference agreed to by the parties”;
one was awarded to him by the court at Providence ; but in the
case of the third judgment went against him in the Admiralty
Court in Connecticut, and appeal had to be carried to Congress
itself. After much delay and expense he finally succeeded in
recovering his property “ from the hands of those voracious
pirates,” the naval officers of his own country.5

The English, moreover, were quite as active at sea as the
Americans, and captures by the enemy ruined many an ad-

1 Bradford, Letter Book, under date. 3 Boston Gazette , Jan. 6, 1777.

2 Letter Book, op . cit.y March 31, 1778. * Ibid., Feb. 17, 1777.

5 R. I. Commerce , vol. II, pp. 53, 55-

ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF THE WAR

5i

venturer. By the end of the war, Long Island Sound was swept
clean of everything American, and Connecticut shipping had
to “begin anew at the keel.”1 The extraordinary risks and
also the possibility of gaining almost unheard-of fortunes is
well illustrated in the case of Nathaniel Tracy of Newburyport.
The Marquis de Chastellux relates that, when traveling in
America at the end of the war, this merchant told him that in
1777 he had lost one hundred and forty vessels, and had noth¬
ing left but one small privateer brig of eight guns, of which he
had had no news for a long time. Absolute ruin was staring
him in the face when this little vessel unexpectedly arrived in
port with a prize worth £25,000. From that time his luck
turned, and he accumulated a fortune of over £600,000 ster¬
ling.2 De Chastellux’s figures may have been a little exagger¬
ated, but in a memorial presented to Congress in 1806, ten
years after Tracy’s death, it was stated that he had been the
owner of a hundred and ten merchant vessels which, with their
cargoes, were valued at $2,733,300 in specie, and that all but
thirteen were captured or lost. In addition, he was the prin¬
cipal owner of twenty-four cruising ships carrying crews of
twenty-eight hundred men. These ships captured prizes
which were sold for just under $4, 000, 000. 3

Before the war nearly every town in eastern Massachusetts
had begun to be supported in part by manufactures, though
these were on a small scale. Haverhill, for example, in 1767
had forty-four workshops and nineteen mills. Shoemaking
at Lynn had already become an important industry, that' being
the only town which has retained its characteristic manufac¬
ture of pre-Revolutionary days.4 In many ways the war
immediately stimulated manufacturing, the capital coming
mainly from the mercantile class. Powder mills were soon
established at such places as Andover, Stoughton, and Brad¬
ford, and the metal manufactures of Springfield and Waterbury
date from the establishment at those interior points — chosen

1 F. M. Caulkins, History of New London , (New London, 1895), p. 542.

2 Travels , op. cit.y vol. II, p. 247.

3 Quoted by J. J. Currier, History of Newbury port , (Newburyport, 1906), p. 624 n.

4 V. S. Clark , History of Manufactures in the United States , 1607- rS6o, (Washington,
1916), pp. 186 /.

52

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

for safety — of the arms factories of this period.1 Although
nail-making had been a winter household industry on the farms,
small nails and tacks had been imported, mainly from England,
and the shortage during the war inaugurated a new method of
manufacture in America, thus establishing one of the most
important post-war industries in Rhode Island.2 Necessity
set ingenuity to work, and the superiority of American mills of
various sorts to the English, as noted in some cases by con¬
temporary travelers, dates from these years of rapidly changing
business.

It is impossible to specify all the minor ways in which money
was being quickly accumulated by those shrewd or unscrupu¬
lous enough to make use of the opportunities offered. It was
said that considerable fortunes were made even in buying up
the notes of the soldiers at low prices and thus taking advantage
of their ignorance or necessities.3 By many varied means,
reputable as well as disreputable, new men came rapidly to the
surface. “The war,” wrote one observer, “has thrown prop¬
erty into channels where before it never was and has increased
little streams to overflowing rivers : and what is worse, in
some respects by a method that has drained the sources of
some as much as it has replenished others. Rich and numerous
prizes, and the putting six or seven hundred per cent on goods
bought in peace time, are the grand engines. Money in large
sums, thrown into their hands by these means, enables them to
roll the snow ball of monopoly and forestalling.” 4 “The old
substantial Merchants” of Boston — wrote Samuel Adams —
“have generally laid aside trade and left it to Strangers or
those who from nothing have raised fortunes by privateering.” 5

On every hand were heard complaints of hawkers and ped¬
dlers and persons no one had ever heard of, who had suddenly
risen to affluence and were usurping the places of the old fami¬
lies. These men were of a wholly different type from the con¬
servatives whom they displaced. Most of the ultra-conserva-

1 J. L. Bishop, History of American Manufactures from 1609 to i860, (Philadelphia,
1861), vol. I, pp. 495, 516.

2 Clark, op. cit., p. 222.

3 Conn . Courant, June 24, 1783.

4 Austin, Gerry , vol. I, p. 220.

5 Writings , vol. IV, p. 19.

ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF THE WAR

53

tive element had taken the Tory side at the beginning of the
struggle, and had long disappeared from the colonies before its
end. So rapid had been the economic changes that even the
less conservative men, who had chosen the revolutionary side,
had also been pushed out to make room for newcomers, most
of whom had had but little or no experience in mercantile or
public affairs before the war. It is true that in each of the
New England colonies certain staunch leaders remained, but
these had now to contend with radical and untrained forces
both in politics and in business.

In the former field, partly from the economic failure of the
old families, partly from the rise of new moneyed men, and
partly from uneasy democratic movements among the people
generally, the type which was coming to the front by the end
of the war was also changing rapidly. In 1783 Mrs. John
Adams wrote that there had been an overturn in the Massa¬
chusetts House of Representatives and that at the last election
over one hundred new men had been elected.1 When, five
years later, her husband returned from his long foreign mission,
he noted that the people had discarded almost all “the old,
stanch, firm patriots, who conducted the revolution in all the
civil departments, and has called to the helm pilots much more
selfish and much less skillful.” 2 “When you come,” wrote
James Bowdoin to ex-Governor Pownall in 1783, “you will
scarcely see any other than new faces. . . . The change which
in that respect has happened within the few years since the
revolution is as remarkable as the revolution itself. It seems
to have anticipated the time when * all old things shall be done
away with and all things become new.’” 3

All along the seacoast the life of the people was completely
altered by the war. From the military standpoint there were
the constant fears of raids by the enemy and the permanent
occupation of Newport. But from the economic point of
view there was probably not a family, of however humble
circumstances, living on the coast whose life did not feel the

1 Letters, vol. I, p. 183.

2 John Adams, Works, (Boston, 1856), vol. IX, p. 557.

3 Mass. Hist. Soc., Coll., Ser. VII, vol. VI, p. 22.

54

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

strain of war. The thousands of sailors who had manned the
merchant ships of the New England carrying trade, working for
wages, became speculators in the risks of the privateers upon
which they sailed. To pay their own debts or support their
families during their absence, they frequently sold part of their
possible share in the prize money, before they sailed, to specu¬
lators who sprang up in this line of business in the privateering
ports. But it was not only the merchant sailors who were
drawn away from a legitimate occupation to the hazards of a
life in which recklessness and lawlessness ruled supreme. The
fisheries, upon which was based a large part of the wealth of
Massachusetts, were ruined by 1777, and not only were the
capital and ships tied up by the complete stoppage of that
industry forced to find other employment, which was not always
possible, but so also were the thousands of persons who were
normally engaged in it. It is impossible to estimate with
accuracy the number of men who were so diverted, but some
idea may be gained from the fact that although Marblehead
was the largest fishing port, the smaller ports of Salem and
Beverly dispatched fifty-two privateers in a single season,
manned by over four thousand sailors.1 It has been stated that
Newburyport sent out a single fleet of twenty-two vessels with
over a thousand men, which was never heard from again.
When peace was declared, the small village of Gloucester had
lost over three hundred in killed and missing, or one third of
her able-bodied men. Between 1772 and 1780 the number of
polls in Marblehead dropped from twelve hundred and three
to five hundred and forty-four, and the tonnage of its shipping
from twelve thousand to fifteen hundred. In this single town
at the end of the war there were four hundred and fifty-eight
widows and nine hundred and sixty-six fatherless children.2

The agricultural towns of the back-country suffered less, and
it is rather difficult, in the absence as yet of careful studies of
the subject, properly to appraise the economic change which
came over the small farms. As we have already noted, the

1 R. McFarland, A History of the New England Fisheries , (Univ. of Penn., 1911),
p. 123.

2 Ibid., pp. 123/.

ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF THE WAR

55

scarcity of farm labor, together with decreased crops and
increased cost, naturally brought high prices to the farmer who
had a surplus product for sale. There were constant com¬
plaints, both from the army and from civilians, of the extortion¬
ate gains of the farmers and of the prices charged by them.
But such complaints were heard with respect to all commodi¬
ties, as prices jumped higher and higher to offset the deprecia¬
tion in the currency. It would seem doubtful whether the
prices of farm produce did more than keep pace with this
decline if, indeed, they did that. For example, we may exam¬
ine two complaints from the state of Connecticut, which was
more nearly self-sustaining than any of the others. At the
end of 1777 a writer in the Courant stated that English hay had
risen from forty shillings to £4 and sometimes even to £6. In
other words, it had advanced from two to three hundred per
cent.1 At that time, however, the paper money had fallen to
the point where it took three hundred and twenty-five dollars
to buy one hundred in specie, so that in spite of the apparent
great advance in the price of hay, the farmer was really getting
less for it than at the beginning of the war. If we take the
average of the two prices complained of as £5, we find he was
receiving two and a half times his old price, but in paper of
which it took three and a quarter times as much to have the
same purchasing power. This also holds good of complaints
made at the end of the next year. It was stated, for example,
that grass-fed beef which had cost from sixteen to twenty shill¬
ings a hundred in 1775 then cost £5 to £6, or an advance of
from five to six times.2 But we find that in the steady depreci¬
ation of paper money the exchange between paper and specie
then stood at about seven hundred and forty-two, so that even
with farm prices at five or six hundred, the farmer was falling
behind, without, moreover, allowing for increased cost of
production.

The great bulk of the farming population tilled small farms
which barely supported them in moderate comfort by hard
toil.3 With such small surplus as they could sell they bought

1 Conn. Courant , Dec. 2, 1777. 2 Ibid., Dec. 15, 1778.

3 Cf. Adams, Founding of New England , p. 8.

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

56

those commodities and articles which could not be raised on
their own acres or manufactured by themselves and their
families. Luxury had always been absent from the small
farm, but now the purchase of what had been necessities must
have decreased except in the case of such farmers’ families as
could not withstand the temptation of the extravagance about
them and went into debt to meet a rising scale of living. There
is evidence that such was not seldom the case. Bradford, for
example, from whose manuscript letters we have quoted so
frequently, was complaining in 1778 that “the illiberal Spirit
of the Farmers is beyond Belief, loosing even first principles”
in the prices they were extorting, and yet in the same letter
he said, in another connection, that such is “the Parsimony of
our Farmers that those French Adventurers now find it difficult
to vend their Goods.” 1 It would seem as if the fact was that
although the farmers might in many cases be infected by the
growing taste for extravagance and luxury they were by no
means so well-off as prices might indicate to the thoughtless.
In the beginning of the war, when prices were rising on account
of other causes than depreciation and when the farmer still had
a stock of goods on hand, it may have been, as a Boston mer¬
chant wrote, that the “farmer and the bulk of the people gain
by the war” ; 2 but this was probably not true of the average
small farmer as the struggle continued. The larger farmer
may have worked into a somewhat different position, and it has
been claimed that he prospered during the years up to 1780,
when his condition rapidly altered for the worse.3 4 In Con¬
necticut it was said in 1777 that “these high prices are an ad¬
vantage to the able, wealthy farmer, who raises much produce
for the market; but if I mistake not, are a disadvantage to
every other class of men. Now such wealthy farmers are but
a small part of the community : yea, they are but a small part
even of the farmers.” 4 This is a distinction that should not be

1 Letter Book, March 31, 1778.

2 April 4, 1777. Quoted by W. B. Weeden, Economic and Social History of New
England , (Boston, 1890), vol. II, p. 779.

3 R. V. Harlow, “Economic Conditions in Massachusetts, 1775-1783,” Col. Soc.
Mass., Publications , vol. XX, pp. 177 /., 190.

4 Conn. Couranti Jan. 13, 1777.

ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF THE WAR

57

lost to sight, and the uneasiness of the small farmers, if the
above analysis is correct, would provide much of the basis for
the agitation which came after the close of the war. Even
before the end the farmers were apparently becoming restive
and endeavoring to make themselves felt to a greater extent
politically, for it was stated in Connecticut that although the
Assemblies had always had a large element in them of agricul¬
turists, the great majority of the representatives were then
becoming of that class, and that the farmers were more active
politically than at “any period within the memory of man.” 1
There is no doubt that the old antagonism between the “court”
— or town — and the “country” parties was much accentu¬
ated by the existing economic conditions. Samuel Adams
might lament in 1777 that “the Country and the Town . . .
mutually complain of each other,” and that the war was no
time for angry disputes, but the recrimination between the two
classes in society was maintained with increasing bitterness.2

In contrast to the amount of time which has been spent on
the topics of slavery and indented servants, there has as yet
been no careful study made of the conditions and history of
free white labor in any of the colonies during the colonial
period. We know less of the numbers, wages, and conditions
of free labor than of any other class in colonial society. During
the war years there is ample evidence, though much of it is of
general character, to indicate that there was a great scarcity
of labor of all sorts in the larger centres. We have already
noted Bradford’s constant complaints on that score in connec¬
tion with shipping in Boston. The wave of extravagance, of
which we shall speak later, also created a demand for labor in
new lines, and the number of men employed in the military
services naturally reduced the supply.

In fixing the prices of commodities at the various conventions
which we have mentioned, regulations were also made covering
the wages of laboring men, but it is impossible to tell to what
extent these may have been complied with between employer
and employed. We know that the prices ordered to be charged

1 Conn. Courant , May 4, 1779.

2 Works , vol. Ill, p. 365. Cf. Harlow, op. cit., pp. 169 /.

58

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

for goods were not observed, and it is probable that labor also
charged and received more than the legal rates. Bradford
stated at the end of 1778 that “ money is hourly depreciating
in its value and the necessaries of life and labour rising more
than the proportion of the declension of the currency.” 1 The
wages of ordinary labor, however, would not appear to have
kept pace with the falling value of the currency in which they
were paid. Before the war the wages of a farm hand in Massa¬
chusetts were three shillings a day in summer, and an effort was
made in that state to keep them at that by statute when the
war broke out, and other wages also at their former figures.2
If we count twenty-six working days to a month, the farm
hands would have earned just £4 a month; but in May 1778
Mrs. Adams complained that farm labor was asking £12 a
month and none could be obtained for less.3 4 We find, however,
that farm produce was selling for from five to six times the
former rate, and that paper money was at about five hundred,
rising to over seven hundred by the end of the year. If labor
was receiving only three times the pre-war rate, it was thus
falling behind even faster than the small farmer, and accumu¬
lating grievances of its own.

The economic dislocation brought about by the war as re¬
gards the comparative poverty of the former wealthy and the
extravagance of the new rich comes out in innumerable letters
of the period. “Your brother Williams,” wrote the able
physician, Dr. Orne of Salem, to Colonel Pickering, “has lost a
great deal of his estate, and it frets him not a little. I don’t
much wonder at it, when people have been raised by the war
from the lowest indigence to affluence.” Again he commented,
in 1782, “I am weary to death of this dreadful war. It is
attended with such irregular distribution of property, such
invasion of order, such decay of morals, so much public distress
and private extravagance.” 4 The extravagance of those who
were making money rapidly was condemned on every side and

1 Letter Book, Dec. 3, 1778.

2 Acts and Resolves , Province of Mass. Bay, vol. V, p. 584.

3 Letters, vol. I, p. 121.

4 Pickering, Timothy Pickering, vol. I, pp. 365/.

ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF THE WAR

59

freely commented upon. “You can scarcely form an Idea of
the increase and growth of the extravagance of the People in
their demands for Labour and every Article for sale,” wrote
William Vernon of the Navy Board at Boston to John Adams
in 1778. “Dissipation has no bounds at present; when or
where it will stop, or if a reform will take place, I dare not pre¬
dict.” 1 Henry Marchant of Newport wrote in alarm of “the
inordinate extravagance of the times, a lawless thirst for
riches, and a spirit of monopolizing and speculation, big with
more evils than all the armies of Europe could afford.” 2 Mrs.
Adams, on reaching London in 1784, noted with surprise that
both men and women were much more plainly dressed than in
Boston, and that ladies wore muslin instead of silk, as at home.3
In the latter years of the war merchants’ advertisements in
the newspapers offered quantities of all sorts of luxuries for sale
and they evidently found a ready market. Samuel Adams
complained in vain that people were promoting all kinds of
“Superfluity of Dress and Ornament, when it is as much as
they can bear to support the Expense of cloathing a naked
Army.” 4 At Hartford, East Windsor, and other small towns
in Connecticut, merchants offered ivory combs, silver buckles
for shoes and stocks, laces, silks, and velvets for the gay war-
society of the “Land of steady habits.” 5 The old type of New
England Puritan society had been disintegrating for some
decades, and, as usual, war not only brought new tendencies
into play but emphasized the effects of those already come into
operation.

1 Allen, Naval Hist, of American Revolution , vol. I, p. 49.

2 Staples, Rhode Island in the Continental Congress , p. 193.

3 Letters , vol. II, p. 27.

4 Works , vol. IV, p. 236.

6 Conn. Courant3 March 12 and Aug. 27, 1782.

CHAPTER III

MORAL EFFECTS OF THE WAR

Propaganda — Treatment of Loyalists — Half Pay of Ameri¬
can Officers — Post-War Psychology — The Cincinnati — Effect
of the War Intellectually — The Arts — Education — Religion
— Morals

If we accept the estimate that at the beginning of the war
one third of the people were in favor of independence, one third
opposed to it, and one third indifferent, it is evident that two
thirds could not have been counted upon to sustain the patriot
side with any ardor. Of the remainder, many drew the line
in their patriotism at making any personal sacrifice, and in
the last years of the war their weariness of the struggle became
pronounced. There were noble examples of disinterested
love of country, and on the whole the people bore their suffer¬
ings well, but it is difficult to sustain the mass of a population
at a high pitch of pure patriotic endeavor or moral fervor for
years at a time. In this respect, as the difficulties of enlistment
and the orgy of profiteering and self-seeking indicate, the War
of the Revolution offered no marked contrast to any other.

Propaganda was necessary from the beginning to stir the
popular emotions, and in character that propaganda did not
differ greatly from that employed in the great struggle of re¬
cent years. Efforts are always made to rouse the herd instinct
in a nation at such crises, and the righteousness of the cause
need not blind us to the methods employed. The people must
be made to feel that there can be no two sides to the question,
that they themselves are solely in the right in everything, that
all virtue lies with them and all infamy with the enemy, whose

MORAL EFFECTS OF THE WAR

61

traits and acts are painted in the blackest dye.1 The lowest
appeals to fear and revenge are stimulated by stories of atroc¬
ities, real or imaginary, perpetrated by the enemy, whereas
the propagandist paints his own party in the brightest colors
of virtue and courage. A despot fighting with a standing army
independent of his people’s support may be chivalrous in his
opinion of the foe. Apparently a democracy waging war has
to drug itself with lies. Nor is this due to having to secure
the support of the lowest elements in the community ; for few
are so independent in judgment as wholly to escape the conta¬
gion of mob thinking at such times. It has sometimes been said
that propaganda was a discovery of the last war, but a careful
study — which has not yet been made — of propaganda in
the Revolution would result in matching all the efforts made
between 1914 and 1918, in spite of the wealth of psychology
poured out by experts in the later struggle.

No one was more astute in its use than Samuel Adams, and
it was not many weeks after Bunker Hill before he was urging
the importance of covering some of the shortcomings of the
patriot army. “Some of our military gentlemen have, I fear,
disgraced us,” he wrote to Gerry. “It is important that every
anecdote that concerns a man of real merit among them be
improved as far as decency will admit of.” 2 This was quite
legitimate, but not so were some of the efforts made to spread
stories of the inhumanity of the British. It was stated, for
example, without any foundation, that they were taking “in¬
human pains to propagate ” the smallpox among the colonists —
a type of story which has a familiar ring from recent years.3
There had been some cases of wanton outrage on the part of
the Hessians on their march through New Jersey, and, al¬
though not all the soldiers in the patriot army were above re¬
proach as to property or women, much was made of the enemy
cases for the purpose of arousing the anger of the people. Two
young girls, said to have been ravished, figured prominently
in the newspapers, and handbills were posted telling the

1 Cf. W. Trotter, Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War , (London, 1921), pp. 216 ff.,
et passim.

2 Austin, Gerry , vol. I, p. 114.

3 Conn. Courant , Aug. 12, 1776.

62

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

story.1 Eventually the usual official report as to the brutality
of the enemy made its appearance, and the results of this Con¬
gressional investigation sustaining the stories were spread broad¬
cast.2 It was falsely reported in Rhode Island that the British
had amused themselves there by digging up dead bodies in the
cemeteries, stripping them of their grave clothes, and leaving
them exposed naked to the public.3

On the other hand, the conspicuous humanity of certain
British officers was carefully concealed by the authorities for
fear of its effects. In October 1776, Sir Guy Carleton took a
number of American prisoners and treated them with such
kindness and courtesy as, in the words of Major Trumbull,
son of the governor of Connecticut, “might have exposed to
great hazard the success of America.” 4 The prisoners, when
released, were warm in their appreciation of the kind treatment
they had received. Trumbull, fearing that it had made a
“very dangerous impression,” hastened to make his report to
General Gates, suggesting “the danger of permitting these
men to have any intercourse with our troops,” and accordingly
they were not permitted to land from the boats on Lake George,
but were sent direct to their homes at Skenesborough. It may
not have been entirely unconnected with the fear expressed
by the Connecticut commander that ten days later a letter
appeared in the Connecticut Courant , asking whether Ameri¬
cans “who are millions strong and own near one half the world”
could think of consigning themselves and their posterity “to
the tyranny of such incarnate Demons.” 5 As the people
became more war-weary, the propaganda increased in violence
of appeal. That by 1781 the people were very weary indeed is
indicated by ample evidence, and there were innumerable
articles and proclamations urging them to one last effort.6

All of this propaganda naturally did much to embitter re¬
lations between the patriot colonists and the British, as well as

1 Reprinted in Conn. Courant , Dec. 30, 1776.

2 E.g., Boston Gazette , May 26, June 2, 9, 1777.

3 Conn. Journal , Jan. 28, 1778.

4 Autobiography of John Trumbull , (New York, 1841), p. 34.

6 Issue of Oct. 21, 1776.

6 e-g-> Conn. Courant , July 3, 17, 31, 1781.

MORAL EFFECTS OF THE WAR

63

to foster many a legend of later times. It also served to give
some color of justification in the eyes of many to the atrocious
treatment meted out to the Loyalist element in the population
— a treatment that, as time went on, had no little of its founda¬
tion in a mere desire to plunder the estates of the Tories. The
issuing of the Declaration of Independence had drawn the line
distinctly between the parties. Thereafter a man had to choose
between loyalty to the established and legal government and
adherence to the revolution. As we pointed out in the preced¬
ing volume, there was much in the Loyalist point of view to
appeal to honest and conservative men.1 Justified on high
grounds as the revolution was, we should not lose sight of the
fact, in dealing with the period from the contemporary stand¬
point and before revolt had achieved the sanction of success,
that the movement was a revolutionary one, and was carried
out at first by a minority, and to a considerable extent by
intimidating the unorganized conservative and Loyalist ele¬
ments.

As soon as the conflict was well under way, voices were raised
for even more violent action against all who would not openly
declare themselves on the side of revolution. Even before the
Declaration was signed, Connecticut had prohibited freedom
of speech. The legislature passed a law that any person who,
not only by overt act but even in writing or speaking, defamed
Congress or the General Assembly of the colony should be tried
and, if convicted, fined, disfranchised, or imprisoned, and this
law was vigorously enforced.2 The Committees of Safety
took action for disarming the Tories or suspected Tories. In
Petersham, for example, Loyalists were required to deliver all
their arms to the selectmen ; were not allowed to leave town
without a pass signed by a majority of the Committee of Cor¬
respondence ; nor were more than two allowed to meet together
for any purpose other than town meeting, public worship, or
funerals.3 In July 1776 it was reported to the Earl of Dart¬
mouth that “the madness of the people ... is inexpressible” ;

1 Revolutionary New England , 1691-1776 , pp. 447 ff.

2 C. H. Van Tyne, The Loyalists in the American Revolution , (New York, 1902), p. 199.

1 Conn. Courant , Sept. 20, 1776.

64

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

that many Tories had been obliged to fly for their lives, and
those who remained had to conceal their true sentiments.1

Letters began to appear in the press calling for the extermina¬
tion of all Loyalists. “The application of the Halter and
Gibbet, I conceive, is the only Remedy that can with safety
be relied on” against “this stinking Race,” wrote one Connecti¬
cut man.2 Nor was such talk heard only among irresponsible
hot-heads. John Adams wrote in 1780 that from the first he
had strenuously recommended that “all inimical to the cause”
should be fined, imprisoned, or hanged, and that he would have
hanged his own brother if he had taken the English side.3

Law after law was passed in New England against the Loyal¬
ists, and in Massachusetts, in 1776, freedom of speech was
drastically suppressed, the legislature enacting that every person
who either in public or private discourse should discourage
anyone from supporting the Declaration of Independence or
even attempt to justify the English position should be fined
£50 or go to jail.4 At the same session it was also enacted
that anyone owing allegiance to the state who should give aid
or comfort to the enemy by open deed should suffer death.5 |

Efficient machinery was promptly devised for weeding out
the Tory element. In Massachusetts it was provided that a
meeting of the inhabitants of each town might be called, at
which a strong patriot should be chosen as chairman. Any
citizen present at the meeting might give in the name of anyone
suspected of Tory sympathies and, if a majority present voted
affirmatively, the person named was arrested and tried at the
next session of court. If convicted, he was shipped as soon
as possible, at his own expense, to Europe or the West Indies.6
Early in 1778 the state passed a law banishing all who refused
to take the oath of allegiance to the Revolutionary government.
Those refusing were to be put in jail and forty days later de¬
ported to some port within British dominions at their own

1 Ambrose Searle to the Earl, July 25, 1776, Stevens Facsimiles, 2040: 4.

2 Conn. Courant , Sept. 16, 1776.

3 Quoted by E. Ryerson, The Loyalists of America, (Toronto, 1880), vol. II, p. 127.

4 Acts and Resolves , vol. V, p. 612.

5 1 hid., p. 615.

6 Van Tyne, Loyalists, p. 238.

MORAL EFFECTS OF THE WAR

65

expense, death without benefit of clergy being the penalty of
returning to their homes.1 In the earlier stages of the conflict,
in all the New England colonies, suspected Tories had been
seized and forcibly quartered in new neighborhoods or remote
sections.2 In September, Massachusetts banished about two
hundred and sixty, among whom were many of her most promi¬
nent and wealthy citizens, including fifty-three merchants,
sixty “esquires,” and a good many other “gentlemen,” as
well as many in lower walks of life. In the same year New
Hampshire also passed a similar act, banishing thirty “gentle¬
men,” eight merchants, four doctors, and others.3 Rhode
Island took action in 1780 and banished thirty-seven, of whom
eighteen were prominent Newport merchants.4

The laws regarding the property of the Loyalists show a
progressive tendency toward confiscation as the war went on.5
It had early been recommended by Thomas Paine, the author
of Common Sense , that the war be financed by the simple
method of appropriating the property of all Loyalists, and in
1777 Congress advised the states to confiscate the real and
personal property of those who had forfeited “the right to
protection.” In time every state did so. There were protests
here and there, citizens in a town meeting at Portsmouth, for
example, sending in a remonstrance to the legislature against
such an act. They stated that it was unjust to condemn un¬
heard those who were absent, and that confiscation of property
without a trial was “contrary to the principles of civil liberty”
for which the colonists were contending.6 The rancor against
the Loyalists, however, was too strong and the desire to secure
their property too great to prevent the acts being passed. The
Massachusetts act made a travesty of justice, in that notifica¬
tion to those proceeded against could be made by publication

1 Van Tyne, Loyalists , p. 239.

2 Cf. The Diary of Thomas Vernon , (Providence, 1881), ■passim ; Letters and Diaries
of John Rowe, (Boston, 1903), p. 315.

3 O. G. Hammond, Tories of New Hampshire in the hVar of the Revolution, (Concord,
1917), p. 21.

4 R. I. Records, vol. IX, p. 139.

6 The best account is that by A. McF. Davis, “The Confiscation Laws of Massa¬
chusetts,” Col. Soc. Mass., Publications, vol. VIII, pp. 50 ff.

6 N. Adams, Annals of Portsmouth, (Portsmouth, 1825), p. 269.

66

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

in a local newspaper and, when the suit was not contested,
trial by jury was done away with. In the cases of all who had
been banished or had perforce fled from their homes, their
property could thus be taken over without their knowledge
and with no opportunity for defense.1

That in many cases hostile Tories in some communities had
been dangerous to the patriot cause is beyond question, but
these were comparatively few as contrasted with the large
number of those who could not agree with the revolutionary
doctrine and wished merely to live at peace with their neighbors.
When Tories were convicted, a large part of the fine went to the
informer. Cupidity and frequently personal spite conspired to
bring actions against many who were in no wise dangerous and
who were at heart no more opposed to the patriot side than
many who had given it lip service from fear or policy. When
confiscation had become the order of the day, large amounts
of money passed to the credit of the states and gave added
impetus to denouncing men as Tories. The sales of confiscated
estates also afforded opportunity for many to secure coveted
lands or pick up bargains. Massachusetts received over
£98,000 from the sale of ex-Governor Hutchinson’s property
alone, and considering that the properties were taken over
from enemies and sold to friends, there was probably much
undervaluation.2 Not only were some of the finest estates
in all New England thus thrown on the market but, as the
Loyalists were in all walks of life, there was no limit to the
smallness of the properties which might be seized by the state
and which passed into new hands.3 The total amount of
property thus taken over will never be known. The aggregate
amount claimed by those who were in a position to appeal to
the Commission set up by the British Parliament, which did
its work honestly and painstakingly, was over £10,000,000

1 Davis, op. cit ., p. 65.

2 J. H. Stark, The Loyalists of Massachusetts, (Boston, 1910), p. 174. Undervalua¬
tion seems clear in the case which has received the most exhaustive examination of
any. A. McF. Davis, The Confiscation of John Chandler's Estate , (Boston, 1903), p. 69.

3 There is wealth of information as to Loyalists of all ranks given by Alex. Fraser in
the two volumes of the 2d Report of the Bureau of Archives for the Province of Ontario ,
(Toronto, 1905).

MORAL EFFECTS OF THE WAR

67

sterling, of which the Commission disallowed less than
£ 1, 000, 000. 1 The British Government actually paid compen¬
sation to the extent of over £2,000,000, in addition to large
sums spent for the benefit of Loyalists who had taken refuge
in Nova Scotia and Canada.

In the treaty of peace, the most that the British Government
could secure for the benefit of the losers, in what had really
been a civil war in the colonies, was a clause that Congress
should recommend to the several states a conciliatory policy
with reference to them. Unquestionably the fear that newly
acquired property rights might be disturbed if the exiled Tories
were allowed to return accounts for much of the extreme vio¬
lence with which any suggestion of lenient treatment was re¬
ceived. “Do not your spirits rise with indignation, your very
blood curdle in your veins,” wrote one anonymous author in
the Boston Evening Post , “at the idea of these wretches, whose
hands are still smoking with the blood of your slaughtered
countrymen, brothers, and fathers, returning to live among
you ? . . . Can you detach the idea of a robber, and incendi¬
ary, or a murderer from one of them ?” No method is left, he
continues, to prevent the calamity but to unite voluntarily
to render their situation such, if they should return, as to make
them prefer banishment. “Let it be a crime abhorrent to
nature, to have the least intercourse with them. . . . Let
them be avoided as persons contaminated with the most deadly
plague.” He feared that, if this were not done, time might
soften the feeling against them and they might be received
with humanity.2

Town meetings adopted resolutions against permitting their
return. Worcester declared with the utmost violence of vitu¬
peration that it was inconsistent with “the principles of a free
and independent state to admit them ourselves, or to have
them forced upon us.” 3 So unreasoning was the feeling that

1 Statement of the Claims and Losses, etc., Pari. Register , 1790, pp. 623 /. Cf. J.
Eardley-Wilmot, Historical View of the Commission for Enquiring into the Losses, Services
and Claims of the American Loyalists , (London, 1815) ; and H. E. Egerton, ed., The Royal
Commission on the Losses and Services of American Loyalists, (Roxburghe Club, 1915).

2 Issue of April 1, 1783. Cf. April 19.

3 Worcester Town Records , (Worcester, 1882), vol. Ill, p. 443.

68

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

Colonel Pickering wrote to Mrs. Higginson that “some there
are, indeed, whom the country can never forgive; and, un¬
fortunately, their crimes are imputed to the whole body without
distinction. I find it worth a man’s popularity to say a word
in favor of the most deserving, of characters truly innocent, of
men who, instead of injuring, have, during the war, been render¬
ing benefits to this country ! For speaking in favor of such,
I perceive many good men have this year lost their election in
Massachusetts. Dispositions still more violent appear in
other states.” 1

It was not only against Tories that public feeling ran high
in the first year of peace, and the almost hysterical state of
the public mind is indicated also by the violence of expression
against the officers of the American army in connection with
the “half pay” and “commutation” question. The psychol¬
ogy of the crowd after great wars has certain characteristics,
and the year 1783 ran true to type in most unedifying fashion.
The pay of the officers, both in itself and as compared with
that of the privates, had been notoriously inadequate, even
when they received any. As early as 1776 they had asked for
an increase, and during the next four years the subject was
frequently before Congress in various forms. Great Britain
gave her officers half pay for life, and the American officers
felt they were entitled to as much. Congress was opposed
to such a measure, particularly the representatives of the New
England states, the question being largely, as the votes show,
a sectional one. As the years went on, the officers became
more and more anxious about their financial position and about
their future when they should leave the army and have to make
a place for themselves once more in civil life. In the earlier
months of 1780 there were one hundred and sixty resignations
of those who decided they could no longer stand the financial
strain. Finally Congress voted half pay to those officers who
had served throughout the war, a bonus of a year’s pay having
earlier been voted to the privates.2

1 Pickering, Timothy Pickering , vol. I, p. 467.

2 Hatch, Administration of the Revolutionary Army , pp. 71 /. Cf. also A Collection
of Papers relative to Half -P ay , (Boston, 1783).

MORAL EFFECTS OF THE WAR

69

Congress, however, had made no provision for payment, and
in 1782, when it looked as though the army might be disbanded,
the officers became yet more uneasy. Congress could pass
no appropriation without the consent of nine states, and New
England was so parsimoniously opposed to the expense that it
seemed doubtful if any such measure could be passed. The
pay was much in arrears, the accounts of the officers were not
settled, and it appeared as though they would return to civil
life, in many cases, with no ready money and without means
to support their families. The Massachusetts officers applied
to their own legislature for assistance but, although the Council
was in favor of granting their plea, the Assembly voted four
to one against it.1 The threatened mutiny of the officers and
the “Newburgh Address” belong to the general history of the
war rather than to our local account. Congress, whose faith
had already been pledged, became alarmed. Finally that body
voted to grant the officers five years’ full pay in cash or six-per¬
cent securities in lieu of the promised half pay for life, and
this offer was accepted. Although the representatives of New
Hampshire and Rhode Island voted against any grant, enough
states voted affirmatively to carry it.

Connecticut and Massachusetts were numbered among these
latter, but the measure was intensely unpopular in them. It
was claimed that Congress had exceeded its powers and that
the grant should be repudiated. The Massachusetts legislature
declared that it could not consent to giving Congress the power
to levy a tariff because of its action in regard to half pay and
commutation. The press teemed for months with scurrilous
attacks upon the patriotism and motives of the officers. All
the arguments, both for and against allowing them any grant,
appeared in much the same terms as in the recent agitation
over our own bonus, only in much more violent fashion. In
spite of the fortunes made in civil life while the officers had
been spending eight years in the harassing service of their
country with almost no recompense, it was stated that they
were seeking to make themselves into a privileged, aristocratic
class at the expense of impoverished widows and orphans. It

1 Hatch, op. cit.y p. 145.

70

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

was said that the officers had taken advantage of Congress by
threatening that body at a critical moment; that there was
“not an officer but what has doubled his interest by the war” ;
that for every speculator in private life there had been two in
the army; that the six-per-cent certificates ought never to be
included in any refunding and thus become “of a value exactly
proportioned to the services for which they were given.” 1

To perpetuate the associations of the war, the officers had
formed an hereditary society, of which Washington was the
first president, known as the Cincinnati. Even this came in
for a degree of fear and denunciation which it is hard to-day
to understand. Nor was the fear confined to the lower classes.
Samuel Adams wrote that by such an order the officers “exalted
themselves and their Family upon the Ruins of the Common
Liberty.” 2 It was “an odious hereditary distinction.” John
Adams considered it “the deepest piece of cunning yet at¬
tempted,” and wrote that it was “sowing the seeds of all that
European courts wished to grow up among us.” The wearing
of the ribbon which indicated that the wearer or his direct
ancestor had fought for the country was “an effectual sub¬
version of our equality,” and the formation of the association
“an act of sovereignty disposing and creating public rewards
presumptuously enterprized by private gentlemen.” 3 It was
said to be but the first step in the erection of a military despot¬
ism. There are aspects of the psychology of the Revolution¬
ary period that seem to belong to the sphere of pathology,
so abnormal is the state of mind indicated. Calm and dis¬
passionate observers at the time frequently used the word
“phrenzy” to describe the actions of the people, and it appears
as though their mental balance, for the time being, had indeed
been upset.

Connecticut, in particular, was in a ferment for a year.
Town meetings denounced the officers with extraordinary
violence. Farmington, for example, after passing a series of
denunciatory resolutions as to their services and claims,

1 Cf., e.g.y Conn. Couranty June 17, 24, Aug. 12, Sept. 2, Oct. 14, 1783.

2 Works , vol. IV, p. 299.

3 Austin, Gerry , vol. I, pp. 427 /.

MORAL EFFECTS OF THE WAR

7i

threatened open and armed opposition if Congress insisted
upon the Commutation Act, and a mob threatened William
Judd, who had attempted to collect the bonus for himself and
some of his fellow officers. Other towns followed suit and
representatives from twenty-eight met in convention at Middle-
town.

At length the agitation died down, but in no other contro¬
versy of the period was more bitterness engendered. In none
other were the arguments used on so low a plane or more cal¬
culated to appeal to the most sordid passions of the populace.
Technically, 1783 was the year of peace, but in no year of the
war was the passion of the people so aroused against both their
enemies and their defenders. In the press, the town meetings,
and the state legislatures, the dominant note was passionate
prejudice, not reason, and both controversies left abiding marks.
That concerning the Tories affected the social relations of every
town and village, and that concerning the officers affected the
people’s attitude toward the powers of a central government.
Peace had come, but it had come to a people embittered by
suffering. Society had been shaken to its foundations, and
to a great extent had lost the conservatives who had served as
a balance wheel. There had been an overturn of the old ruling
elements, and intense bitterness had been engendered between
the new groups and classes which had emerged.

In some respects the stress of war and its experiences un¬
doubtedly broadened the minds of many. On the other hand,
both reading and education appear to have declined. At first
the booksellers’ advertisements continued, but for the years
1780 to 1784 there was not a single offering of books in the
Boston Evening Post , with the exception of one colonial library
which was offered for sale at auction.1 In 1782 a Hartford
bookseller advertised Tom Jones , Roderick Random , Humphrey
Clinker , Pope’s Essay on Man , Paradise Lost , Watts’ Psalms ,
Chesterfield’s Letters , the Rambler , and a volume of plays among
other items. Politics rather than belles-lettres, however,
occupied the thoughts of the reading public, though that they
occasionally roamed in other fields is indicated by an amusing

1 Boston Evening Post , passim , and July 19, 1783.

72

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

juxtaposition in the above lists of Thoughts on Liberty , Dittoy
on Adultery} Some hardy spirit, nevertheless, conceiving
that it was time someone came forward to retrieve the situa¬
tion, advertised in the same year that he intended, were suffi¬
cient encouragement shown, to start a new weekly magazine
to relieve “the emaciated visage of the true science — the
pallid gloom with which the face of literature is overcast, and
the rapid advances of a fatal consumption on the vitals of
substantial virtue.” 1 2 Unfortunately there is no evidence that
he succeeded. Practically all of the reading matter, beyond
sermons and political pamphlets, had been imported from
England before the war, and with the opening of hostilities
importations naturally ceased on any commercial scale. All
sorts of goods were indeed smuggled in, but books evidently
were not, either because they did not lend themselves easily
to this form of import or because there was no market. The
new war-rich are rarely cultivated persons and the professional
and middle classes were suffering too severely to warrant much
expenditure for literature.

Now and then we get a glimpse of the arts. The general
New England opinion was probably voiced by “A Member of
the General Court” when he classes “painters, (particularly
inside house, miniature, and portrait painters),” hairdressers,
tavernkeepers, musicians, stage players, buffoons, and exhibi¬
tors of birds and puppets as among the unprofitable laborers
in the state, because the labors of most of them “exist no longer
than the sound which they make is heard, or the sight of them
is present.” 3

Of. all the arts, music apparently made the most popular
appeal in New England, and even in the midst of the war we
find advertisements at Hartford of violins, flutes, hautboys,
French horns, clarinets, bassoons, psalteries, pipes and tabors,
and other instruments, as well as music for them. There was
also the advertisement of a gentleman who gave lessons in

1 Conn. Courant , Feb. 5, 1782.

2 Boston Evening Post) March 16, 1782.

3 National Arithmetick or Observations on the Finances of the Commonwealth of Massa¬
chusetts , (Boston), [1786], p. 21.

MORAL EFFECTS OF THE WAR

73

“the composition of music.”1 In Boston, in 1782, William
Selby, whose activities on behalf of music in New England
would seem to deserve more investigation than has been ac¬
corded to them, proposed to “the friends of music and the
fine arts ” to publish monthly the New Minstrel. Each number
was to have at least one composition for the harpsichord, piano,
or spinet, one for the guitar, one for the flute, one song in
French, two in English, and an essay on musical expression.
Selby hopefully believed that “with a nation,” as he somewhat
enigmatically expressed it, “far gone in politeness and the fine
arts, even the stern patriot and lover of his country’s glory,
might be addressed on the present subject with not less pro¬
priety than the man of elegance and taste.” 2 However, the
patriots did not seem to be keenly interested in their country’s
artistic glory. The centre of culture by this time had shifted
from Massachusetts to Connecticut, but as Governor Trum¬
bull remarked in final conclusion, when trying to dissuade his
son from becoming an artist, “Connecticut is not Athens.”
“With this pithy remark,” wrote the unconverted son, “he
bowed and withdrew and never more opened his lips upon the
subject.” 3 The arts had been valued only by a cultivated
minority, and that minority lost a large part of its numbers
and many of its most cultivated members in Boston, Newport,
and elsewhere when the Tories fled the country.

In the matter of schools and public education there were
conflicting tendencies. The poverty and taxation incident to
the war resulted, in many rural sections, in the abandonment
of schools or the curtailment of school terms. The first school-
law passed in Massachusetts during or subsequent to the Revo¬
lution — that of 1789 — was a step backward in educational
ideals, and indicates how far short the older laws had come
from being complied with. Under the new law, towns of at
least fifty families were required to support an English school
for only six months in the year instead of the entire twelve;
and only towns of two hundred families, instead of one hundred

1 Conn. Courant , Feb. 3, 1777.

2 Boston Evening Post , Feb. 2, 178 2.

3 Autobiography of John Trumbull , op. cit.y p, 89.

74

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

as under the old law, were required to support a grammar
school at any time. This did away with the obligation on the
part of one hundred and twenty towns out of a total of two
hundred and thirty.1 This same period, nevertheless, marks
the second beginning of the important “academy” movement,
and from it date the two Phillips Academies, those at Andover,
Massachusetts (1778) and at Exeter, New Hampshire (1781).
Four members of the Phillips family contributed $85,000 to
the two institutions, which became the model for many other
later ones in the Northern states.2

Although Harvard was able to continue at Cambridge, the
students of Yale were forced to scatter, “Tutor Dwight”
taking some of them to Wethersfield and Professor Story others
to Glastonbury, with the arrangement that President Daggett
should “visit the different classes as often as he could with
convenience.” On the other hand, a medical department
was added to Harvard in 1782, and the first law school in
America was established at Litchfield, Connecticut, in 1784,
by Judge Tappan Reeve. A new era was also beginning in
American textbooks; for in 1783 Noah Webster published his
spelling book, and Jedediah Morse his geography in the year
after. Of the former, fifty million copies were to be sold, in
time, establishing many American spellings and pronunciations.
In one important respect the Revolutionary period marked a
great advance, and after the war a distinct forward movement
took place in the education of girls. In no place in New
England had there been schools for them above the very lowest
grades, with the one exception of Portsmouth, but after peace
a number were founded and several private schools for boys
were made coeducational.

In many places, during the struggle, churches as well as
schools had had to be closed for lack of funds. The Episco¬
palians, perhaps, emerged from the war in the most forlorn
condition of all the sects. Owing to the close connection of the
Church with England and the fact that a number of the clergy

1 E. G. Dexter, History of Education in the United States , (New York, 1922),

pp. E. E. Brown, The Making of Our Middle Schools , (New York, 1921), p. 216.

2 Brown, op. cit., pp. 192 ff.

MORAL EFFECTS OF THE WAR

75

were Loyalists, the Church suffered greatly. At the end there
were only two parishes left in Maine, two in New Hampshire ;
and of the fourteen churches in Massachusetts apparently only
five had clergymen in 1787. Of the four churches in Rhode
Island, one was burned and one was abandoned by the rector.
Of the twenty clergy in Connecticut, only fourteen remained.1

The established Congregational churches, in spite of their
privileged position, also felt the strain greatly. In Hampshire
and Berkshire Counties of western Massachusetts, for example,
whereas thirty-three towns had ministers throughout the
Revolution, thirty-nine had none. In 1779 a motion was laid
before the General Association in Connecticut regarding the
“dark aspect upon our churches in the discouragement lying
upon the candidates entering into the ministry, and the present
distress and difficulties of them that are already in office, from
whence we fear that these churches may be left without lights
in the candlestick,” and asking that an address might be made
to the government and people to save the churches from ruin.2

Besides the purely financial difficulties from which the clergy
suffered with others, — such as decrease in income, the de¬
preciation of paper money, and payment in kind, — infidelity
and indifference were making rapid inroads among their con¬
gregations. As we pointed out in the earlier volume, their
position of absolute and acknowledged authority had been
undermined steadily for several decades. War, as usual, had
brought a complete overturn in the minds of many. Deistic
ideas had been introduced by contacts with English officers and
soldiers in the Seven Years’ War, and now the French were
supposed to have played the same part in unbalancing orthodox
beliefs. In 1784 Ethan Allan published his deistic work.
Reason the only Oracle of Man ,3 a crude, coarsely written book,
which was more a sign of the times than any great influence in
itself. He attacked the clergy, denied the existence of the

1 The Religious History of New England , (Harvard University Press, 1917), pp.
228 f.

2 Quoted by E. F. Humphrey, Nationalism and Religion in America ,

(Boston, 1924), p. 352.

3 Reason the only Oracle of Man , or a compendious System of Natural Religion , (Ben¬
nington, 1784).

76

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

Devil and the imputation of sin from Adam’s fall, and claimed,
on the other hand, that “to construe or spiritualize the Bible
is the same as to inspire it over again, by the judgment, fancy,
or enthusiasm of men.” 1

Apart from the inroads of freethinking, however, there was a
distinct weakening of the old bigotry and narrow-mindedness
on the part of multitudes, although the Revolutionary period
did little, in the way of legal enactments, for the cause of tolera¬
tion. From the very beginning of the struggle with England,
the Baptists under the lead of Isaac Backus had seen an oppor¬
tunity of securing religious as well as political freedom for the
people. As early as 1774 they made an effort — without
success — to obtain action from the Continental Congress,
and they continued the contest in Massachusetts without a
halt. Although they did not succeed in even getting materi¬
ally better terms written into the constitution of 1780, the
publicity they gave to the cause of toleration was not without
effect. That a more tolerant attitude was becoming general
among the clergy of the established church in that state is
indicated clearly by the fact that, in the convention for the
discussion of the Federal Constitution in 1787, of a number of
clergymen who were delegates, all defended the absence of any
religious test, as against the complaints of some of the lay
members.2

In Connecticut more progress was made than in Massachu¬
setts. In 1777 an act was passed exempting “Separates”
from paying taxes for the support of ministers of the established
order provided they could prove that they supported their own
form of worship. Isaac Holly, "who petitioned and wrote against
this as insufficient, enlarged on the inconsistency between
fighting for civil liberty from England and refusing spiritual
liberty to fellow citizens.3 * * Even within the established church
there was a demand for broader views, and in the “Act for

1 Reason the only Oracle of Man , or a compendium System of Natural Religion ,
PP- 469, 378, 385, 44&

2 J. Elliott, Debates in the State Conventions , (Philadelphia, n. d.), vol. II, pp. 1 1 8, 120,

148.

8 M. L. Greene, Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut , (Boston, 1905),

P- 335-

r ,

MORAL EFFECTS OF THE WAR

77

«

securing the Rights of Conscience in Matters of Religion to
Christians of every Denomination,” in 1784, the Saybrook
Platform was abandoned; all Christians were permitted to
attend their own form of worship ; were exempted from contri¬
bution to the state church ; and their congregations were given
the same privileges with respect to supporting their ministers
and their houses of worship as were those of the Congregational
church. Those persons who attended and supported no church
were still taxed for the established one.1 This, indeed, was
far from complete toleration, and the fight was to continue
for several generations before that was achieved, but the Revo¬
lution, with its ferment of thought and insistence upon liberty
and freedom, undoubtedly did much to advance the cause.
The controversy had ceased to be so much theological as moral
and political. The prevailing opinion, outside of Rhode Island,
was that the state could not live without the aid of religion,
and that if the question of support were left without obligation
by the state, it would prove inadequate.

The decline in morals was, indeed, alarming to the older
generation, although we need note only two changes which
called at the time for much comment and condemnation. In¬
temperance had always been common in Puritan New England
as well as in the South, and even the clergy drank heavily at
religious meetings. The hardships, uncertainties, and rapid
pace of living during the war seem to have increased this vice,
and in the last year of hostilities Massachusetts, while trying
to “win the war,” had no less than sixty distilleries in operation,
exceeding all the other states combined.2 Both the Bay State
and Rhode Island passed laws in 1777 against distilling from
grains, but it is noteworthy that the reason given was not the
possible harm from liquors but the danger of making grain too
scarce for food.3

That sensitive barometer, the manners of the young people,
which has given rise to so much discussion since the recent

1 V. Stauffer, New England and the Bavarian Illuminati , (Col. Univ. Studies, 1918),
p. 60.

2 Bishop, Manufactures , vol. II, p. 30-

3 Acts and Resolves , vol. V, p. 731 ; R. /. Records , vol. VIII, p. 357.

78

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

Great War, fell rapidly. Indeed, such a condition may be
considered as one of the characteristics of post-war periods.
The absence of the heads of many families, resulting in lessened
control, the excitement attending the military struggle, the
changed standards introduced by the war-rich with neither
manners nor traditions, and other factors all combine to bring
about such a decline. During the Revolution these influences
were accentuated, perhaps, by the closing of many of the
schools and churches. The Reverend Joseph Strong of Nor¬
wich, who preached at New London just after the war, often
spoke afterward of the conduct of the young people there at
that time. Before the beginning of service there was loud
talking between the pews ; during it there was so much whis¬
pering and moving about that he could scarcely continue ;
and as soon as the blessing was pronounced the place was in
an uproar. Boys and girls called to each other across the
church, joked and laughed, and stampeded from the building.
Before he had reached his lodging the boys were already playing
ball and pitching quoits.1

The lack of manners and the loss of control by the elder gen¬
eration in 1783 are evident when we compare that scene with the
staid churchgoing before the war. A few years later in Salem,
the Reverend Mr. Bentley, speaking of the young women
of that town in the class from which he was considering taking
a wife, remarked that the “circles in which the young ladies
drank tea were not friendly to the suitable decorum required
of the sex, from the want of a guard upon their youthful spirits,
and that a wantoness had ensued, which discovered itself in
the street by such language as curse you &c.” To his horror,
he discovered — or thought he had — that the maiden of his
choice “in company of her sex did behave disorderly, and use
prophane and obscene language . . . common only to sailors.” 2

A new social order and a new outlook upon life were coming
into being. In the previous volume I attempted to show, in
tracing the history of the preceding half-century, that it is a mis¬
take to consider the Revolution as merely a military struggle to

1 Caulkins, New London , p. 573.

2 Diary of William Bentley , (Essex Institute, 1905), vol. I, p. 1 1 8.

MORAL EFFECTS OF THE WAR

79

decide the political question of the relation of the colonies to
the mother country administratively. It is also a mistake to
think of the patriots as having simply left their shops and
farms for military service and returning to them unchanged
when the fight was won. The old order was gone for good by
the time they came back to their families and firesides, and a
new order, intellectual, social, and political, had begun to form.

CHAPTER IV

THE REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENTS

Character of State Governments — New Constitutions — Con¬
flict of Ideas between Classes — Quarrel between V ermont and
New York — Vermont Becomes an Independent State — In¬
trigues with the British

Every ordered society of necessity operates within a frame¬
work of established law and government, and before continuing
our story we must pause to investigate what this framework
was during the stormy years of war in New England. As we
have already seen, the patriot party had secured control of the
established government by peaceable or forcible means in all
four colonies by the summer of 1775.1 In the two corporate
colonies of Rhode Island and Connecticut the problem was a
simple one on account of the nature of the charter governments
which they had always enjoyed. In Massachusetts and New
Hampshire, however, where the governors had hitherto been
royal appointees, there were complications, and during the
travail of war a fifth New England state, Vermont, was born
and had to erect the foundations of a wholly new government.
In all five the people faced the problem of how to pass from a
colonial status within an empire to that of free and independent
states. It was as such that they considered themselves during
the war, and the formation of a Federal government was still
far in the future and out of most men’s thoughts. The Con¬
tinental Congress was not in any sense a federal bond of union,
but rather a working committee for the coordination of military
effort, and was considered as being composed of representatives
of sovereign commonwealths.

1 Adams, Revolutionary New England , 1691-17761 p. 4 33.

THE REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENTS 81

The Declaration of Independence and the casting off of the
yoke of the imperial government had left the peoples of the
colonies free to determine on any new form of government
which they might wish. The crisis of the beginning of hostil¬
ities, however, left little time for constitution-making, and
for the first few years government was necessarily carried on
in somewhat makeshift fashion. In Connecticut and Rhode
Island the legislatures and all the officials — with a few minor
exceptions such as judges of vice-admiralty, king’s attorney,
and so on — had been elected by the people under the old
charters. So far as the machinery of government was con¬
cerned, both colonies had long been virtually independent. In
Rhode Island the governor happened to be a Loyalist, but with
his prompt deposition no further change was needful. At the
May session of the legislature in 1776 it was enacted that there¬
after “the Governor and Company of the English Colony of
Rhode Island and Providence Plantations” should be substi¬
tuted for the name and authority of the king in all writs, com¬
missions, and other public papers ; and by this simple change
the entire transformation of the constitution was effected.1 In
the autumn of the following year a committee was appointed to
“form a plan of government,” but nothing more is heard of its
work.2

In Connecticut the transition was equally simple, but gave
rise later to discussion as to whether in reality the state pos¬
sessed a legal constitution or not. In October 1776? the legis¬
lature, with no special mandate from the people for that pur¬
pose, passed an act that the charter should “be and remain the
civil Constitution of this State,” and that “the Republic is,
and shall forever be and remain, a free, sovereign, and inde¬
pendent State.” 3 Even before the end of the war, however,
the point was raised as to whether the charter had not been
abrogated by the fact that the colony had made war against
England, and whether, therefore, the declaration by the legis¬
lature reestablishing it was not extra-legal, however useful it

1 R. I. Records , vol. VII, pp. 522 /.

2 Ibid. , vol. VIII, p. 304.

3 Conn. State Records , vol. I, pp. 3 /.

82

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

might have been as a temporary expedient. Both this ques¬
tioning of the legality of the constitutional basis of the state
and the demand for a constitution which should be submitted
to the people for ratification belong to a later period. They
arose not from an overniceness as to legal technicalities, but
from a desire for changes in the constitution itself. As a
matter of fact, in spite of the loud-trumpeted revolutionary
doctrine that all power resided in the people and that govern¬
ment could derive its sanction only from them, none of the
state constitutions made during the war received that sanction.

In the two most independent commonwealths, as we have
just seen, the existing legislatures themselves decreed what the
constitutions should be. That of Connecticut throws consid¬
erable light on what was the real political faith of those who
were dealing in the glittering generalities of the doctrines of
natural rights and the sovereignty of the people. The governor
had no power to adjourn or prorogue the legislature, no veto
on their acts, no pardoning power over criminals, and his
patronage was of the slightest. Practically all real power lay
in the legislature, composed of the Council and the lower
house or Assembly. The only check on its will had been the
royal disallowance of laws, and this was removed by the Revolu¬
tion. The Assembly consisted of two hundred representatives,
which was nearly three times the number in New York, al¬
though the population of the two states was practically the
same. The Council — not counting the governor and lieuten¬
ant-governor, who sat ex-officio — consisted of only twelve
men, elected from the state at large. It represented the ruling
class and was the entrenched bulwark of wealth, conservatism,
and the established Congregational church. Long in possession
of the supreme power in the colony, the peculiar method of its
election made it almost a self-perpetuating body. In the
September town meetings every freeman might write down a
list of twenty nominees — the freemen, of course, being but a
fraction of the adult males. These nominations were sent to
the legislature, and the twenty receiving the highest number of
votes were listed as candidates. It was always arranged,
however, so that the existing members or ex-members of the

Nomination for EMdon in

:/k a General Affembiy of the Governor and Company of
E itbe Colony of ConneBicut^ holds# at Nem- JIovm m
, .the zdcI hurfday of OBobery Anno Dam. 1 775.

The Gentlemen, nominated by the Votes of the Free-
ttien> to Hand for Eled|ion in May pe;it, as fent'in
to. the - General -Aileixlbly, holder* at New-Haven
on the fecond Thurfdav of Oef ober, 1775, viz.

*THHE Honorable Jonathan Trumbull, Efq;

EliOia. Sheldon, Efq;
Eliphafet Dyer, Efq

jabex puotington, , Efq;
Williap Pitkin, Efq;

Roger I Sherman, Efq;

Abraham Davenport,- Efq;
William Samuel Johofon, Efq;
Jofepb. Spencer, Efq;

Oliver Wolcott, Efq;

Samuel Huntington, ;£fq;

Col. Samuel Holden Parfons
Mr. Daniel Sherman,

Mr. Silas Dpan,

Mr. Titus liofmer.

Nominations for Election, 1776
Library of Congress

84

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

Council stood first on the list, regardless of the number of
votes cast for them by the “people.” At the election the
freeman was given twelve slips of paper only. The names of
all the candidates were read, and the voter dropped his paper
in the ballot box for the candidates in order. Should he wish
to vote for a new man, therefore, he had to retain one of his
slips until after the first twelve had been voted for ; and to do
so under the eyes of the minister and those men of wealth and
prominence in his community who wanted the first twelve
elected and to whose good opinion the voter’s welfare might
be much beholden.1

It would take a very determined innovator indeed, under
the conditions of the time, thus publicly to flout the social,
moneyed, and ecclesiastical magnates of his community. As
the controlling majority within the Council itself consisted
of only seven men, and as that body, in turn, controlled the
appointment of every judge and justice of the peace, the real
grip held by wealth, social position, and the church on the life
of the state can readily be seen. The revolt against England
had a just basis, but for the leaders to stir the people to that
revolt by instilling the doctrines of the equality of all men and
the sovereignty of “the people,” when they themselves con¬
trolled that same people by such an adroitly handled piece
of political machinery as the above, seems a little less than
candid.

New Hampshire was the first of the thirteen colonies to draft
and adopt a wholly new constitution during the war. In
answer to the suggestion of Congress to “call a full and free
representation of the people” to establish such government as
might be necessary, the Provincial Convention, then in session
at Exeter, voted that electors for that purpose must possess
real estate of the value of £20, and candidates must have hold¬
ings of a value of £300.2 They prepared a constitution provid¬
ing for a government by one legislative chamber only, and
without an executive. When the newly elected members of
that body met, however, early in 1776, they themselves elected

1 Cf. R. J. Purcell, Connecticut in Transition , (Washington, 1918), chap. v.

2J. Belknap, History of New Hampshire , (Dover, 1812), vol. II, p. 305.

THE REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENTS 85

an upper house or Council composed of twelve members. The
jealousy of executive power was still in evidence, and no pro¬
vision was made for a governor in the brief constitution which
they drew up. The two houses performed all executive func¬
tions when in session, and during adjournment the affairs of
the state were carried on by a Committee of Safety, the presi¬
dent of the Council, Meshech Weare, being also president of
the Committee. In 1778 the legislature called a special con¬
vention for the sole purpose of drawing up a constitution, thus
establishing a precedent even earlier than Massachusetts,
which has often claimed the honor. The constitution, how¬
ever, was badly drawn and was promptly rejected by the towns.
A second effort was made in 1781, but the proposed instrument
was again voted down, as being too conservative. A third
attempt, the following year, was no more successful.1 In
June 1784 a fourth convention met and adopted a form which
included a governor and a legislature of two houses, the judici¬
ary to be appointed by the executive. The judges, however,
were removable for misconduct, by the Governor and Council,
on application by both legislative houses. A notable advance
was the provision that gave the franchise to all males of twenty-
one years and upward who paid a poll tax and had resided two
years in their towns. This constitution went into effect in
June 1784.

Although New Hampshire had been the first state to adopt a
constitution, however imperfect, its neighbor Massachusetts,
oddly enough, was the last. Throughout almost all the war,
government in that state was carried on by the General Court
(without a governor), Committees of Safety, and the town
meetings. As in Connecticut and Rhode Island, the colonial
charter was considered as still being in effect, but as both
governor and lieutenant-governor under that instrument had
been royal appointees, there were difficulties in the way which
did not obtain in the corporate colonies. The executive powers
belonging to those officials were taken over by the Council.
Various changes had to be introduced into procedure from time

1 Allan Nevins, The American States during and after the Revolution , /775_/7^9>
(New York, 1924), p. 183.

86

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

to time, but with true English instinct these were made to
appear as little revolutionary as possible.

For five years the state was governed as nearly as might be
under the forms of the old charter, but the steady trend of
public opinion was in favor of organizing the government upon
a more permanent basis. As early as 1776 demands had been
heard for ignoring the charter and forming an entirely new
constitution. The simplest expression of the situation, per¬
haps, is to be found in the memorial presented to the General
Court by the town of Pittsfield in that year. This stated that,
owing to the dissolution of the power of Great Britain, America
was in a “state of nature,” and that “the people are the foun¬
tain of power.” 1 Indeed, as was the case in the questions
raised as to the legality of the government under the Connecti¬
cut charter, there can be no doubt that, though as far as possible
the form of legality was adhered to, in reality the government
was a revolutionary one, to which the people tacitly submitted
in part but which derived no direct sanction from them.

The assumption of power by the General Court in 1775 had
been generally acquiesced in, but not entirely so. The Council,
in lieu of a governor as executive, had reorganized the courts
and appointed judges, but these were not always recognized
by the people, particularly in the western counties. This was
notably the case in Berkshire, where no state courts were
allowed to sit, and where government was largely resolved into
town meetings. The freemen at the Pittsfield meeting ap¬
pointed five judges themselves. The Lee meeting voted that
they would “obey the laws of this state” and support the civil
authority “for the term of one year” — a curious annual
grant ! 2 On the other hand, Great Barrington voted that,
“not having a new constitution and other reasons,” the laws
of the state should not operate in that town, which thus, in
part, seceded from the commonwealth. Ashfield considered
that “each town is invested with a native authority to chuse”

1 H. A. Cushing, History of the Transition from Provincial to Commonwealth Govern¬
ment in Massachusetts , (Col. Univ. Studies, 1896), p. 198.

2 L. A. Frothingham, Brief History of the Constitution and Government of Massachu¬
setts , (Harvard Univ. Press, 1916), p. 19.

THE REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENTS 87

its own judges, except for murder cases ! Why “native author¬
ity” should have stopped at that precise point is not made
clear, but apparently natural law provided that in such cases
eleven men from eleven towns should be chosen annually to
“jug [sic] and condemn such murderers,” the era of judging and
acquitting being reserved for our own more enlightened times ! 1
These men of the back-country and small villages applied the
generalities and theories uttered so glibly by radical revolu¬
tionaries, such as Samuel Adams, with a literalness that was
disconcerting. In May 1776, for example, the so-called “Con¬
stitutionalist Party” in Berkshire wrote to the General Court
saying, bluntly but quite truly, “we have heard much of gov¬
ernment being founded on compact : What compact has been
formed as the foundation of government in this Province?”2

Many towns agitated the matter of a new constitution,
although the majority of them either were apathetic or were too
much taken up with prosecuting the war to trouble about the
problem. In 1776 the Assembly recommended to the two
hundred and fifty towns of the state that they should vote on
the question as to whether the General Court should draw up
and enact a constitution, and whether it should be submitted
to the people for examination before ratification by the Assem¬
bly. Only ninety-seven towns responded, but of these seventy-
four were in favor of the proposition, Boston being among
those opposed. The work of the Assembly, sitting as a con¬
stituent convention, was slow, but at length a constitution
was drafted and ready for submission on the fourth of March,
1 778. 3 Copies were forwarded to the selectmen of each town,
who were to submit the document to the voters at town meeting
and transmit the action taken. It was decisive, for the pro¬
posed constitution was defeated by a vote of ten thousand
against two thousand.

One of the main objections was the absence of any bill of
rights. The knotty point of representation was a particularly

1 Ibid.) pp. 19/.

2 Cited by S. B. Harding, The Contest over the Ratification of the Federal Constitution
in Massachusetts , (New York, 1896), p. 4.

3 Cushing, op. cit., pp. 207 ff.

88

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

difficult one, the maritime towns thinking the proposed plan
made it too nearly equal, whereas the others thought it would
be too unequal. Both in town meetings and in the press
the matter was thoroughly canvassed. No examination of the
question was more interesting or more influential than the
findings of a convention of representatives of the towns of
Essex County, who met at Ipswich in April. The extremely
adverse opinion reached by them was published in a pamphlet,
known as the “Essex Result/’ and in that form was probably
the work of Theophilus Parsons of Newburyport.1

Throughout all the public discussions of the times we can
detect the growing antagonism between those with property
and those without, the beginnings of which we have already
traced in the preceding volume. The leaders of the revolu¬
tionary movement had preached doctrines of the most radical
tendency, but most of them drew back from putting them into
practice in the internal affairs of their states. The rights of
man might be discharged in a fusillade against the British
Parliament, but the ruling classes among the patriots had no
intention of allowing them to be discharged against themselves
by the “lower classes’’ of their own communities. That was
quite a different matter. The leaders loudly proclaimed to
George the Third that the people were the sole source of power,
and that all men were created free and equal, but when it came
to maintaining the existing order of society at home and pro¬
tecting property rights they displayed no little circumlocution
and casuistry in defining their doctrines so as safely to denature
them. The writer of the “Essex Result’’ assented to the
propositions — as indeed it would have taken a bold man not
to do during the war — that “all men are born equally free,’’
that each man has certain alienable and inalienable rights, and
that all are bound to obey only those laws to which they have
given their consent.2 Theophilus Parsons, John Lowell, and
the others who had agreed upon the “Result,” however, evi¬
dently believed that property required to be protected by
property-owners, and that the common man, however “equal”

1Text in T. Parsons, Memoir of Theophilus Parsons , (Boston, 1859), pp. 358-402.

2 Ibid., pp. 365/.

THE REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENTS 89

he might be with the capitalist as a theoretical source of power
when being urged to enlist in the army, could not be trusted to
exercise that power in civil life. They said, indeed, that
“among the bulk of the people, we shall find the greatest share
of political honesty, probity, and a regard for the interest of
the whole, of which they compose the majority.” Neverthe¬
less, in spite of this sop to the Demos, they added that, for
wisdom, firmness, and consistency, it is necessary to look to
the “men of education and property,” and to them should be
entrusted the task of drawing up a constitution and subse¬
quently of enacting under it such laws as related to property.1

They thus drew a distinction between laws affecting persons
and those affecting property, considering that in the passage
of the former a consent of a majority of the members of the
commonwealth should be obtained, but, as just stated, that in
making the latter only property-owners should participate;
otherwise, those who made the laws might “give and grant
what is not theirs,” and such laws would be but a “second
Stamp Act.” 2 An elaborate machinery was devised to secure
a proper “representation” of “property,” and the scheme is
interesting as showing how, even during the war waged osten¬
sibly for the rights of the individual, the rights of “property”
— that is, of course, of the property-owning class — were still
uppermost. There is found, naturally, an utter absence of any
thought that all men might have rights in property as a social
product, regardless of whether they had been able to secure any
for themselves in the unequal struggle.

The decisive defeat of the proposed constitution did not halt
the discussion and the demand for some such instrument. In
1779, in response to a favorable vote in town meetings on the
questions submitted by the General Court as to whether a new
constitution was desired, and if so, whether a convention should
be called for the sole purpose of framing one, the Court re¬
quested the election of delegates from “the several Towns and
Places,” the number of delegates to be the same as were sent
to the Court. It is noteworthy, however, that the electorate
was enlarged for this purpose and every freeman of twenty-one
1 Ibid., pp. 369 /. 2 Ibid.) p. 371,

9°

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

years or more was allowed to vote. The same resolution called
for the submission to the people of the constitution when
drafted, and that it must be approved, to be accepted, by “at
least two-thirds of those, who are free and twenty-one years
of age, belonging to this State, and present in the several town-
meetings. 1 The convention thus derived its authority solely
from the people and was in no way dependent upon the General
Court.

The convention held three sessions at intervals, and finished
its work in March 1780. A committee appointed to draft the
document delegated the task to a smaller one, which, in turn,
entrusted the work almost wholly to John Adams.2 He sailed
for Europe in November, and his work was subsequently
amended without his presence by a comparatively small
number of convention members, the attendance having been
greatly reduced by the severe weather of that winter. His
able draft was a compromise, and secured the support of the
“Essex Junto” and, in Boston, of men of such varying views
as James Bowdoin and Samuel Adams.

A complicated method was adopted for its ratification by the
people. It was provided that the proposed constitution be
discussed in town meetings, every meeting to vote on it, clause
by clause, stating their objections, if any. The “people,”
understood in the above sense, were then to grant to an ad¬
journed convention power to tabulate the votes, ratify the con¬
stitution if two thirds of the town-meeting votes favored it, or
to amend it if two thirds of the popular vote were not in favor
of any particular part of it. In the existing condition of gov¬
ernment in the state, the towns, as Dr. Morison says, “were,
in fact, the several sovereigns of Massachusetts Bay; their
relation to the General Court closely approximated that of the
states to the Congress”; only instead of thirteen there were
about three hundred.3

The difficulty of judging conditions from contemporary

1 By far the best account of the adoption of the new constitution is that given by
S. E. Morison, “The Struggle over the Adoption of the Constitution of Massachusetts,
1780,” Mass. Hist. Soc., Proceedings , 1917, pp. 353-411.

2 John Adams, Works , vol. I, p. 288.

3 Morison, op. cit ., p. 360.

THE REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENTS

9i

printed sources is exemplified in this case. The text of the
constitution was not published in any of the six newspapers ;
there was little controversial matter relating to it in any of
their columns, and but two pamphlets appear to have been
brought out regarding it. Nevertheless, in spite of this appar¬
ent public apathy, the returns from the towns show that there
was a vigorous discussion going on and that keen interest was
taken. Massachusetts proper had then a population of about
three hundred and seven thousand. If we assume that one
fifth of these were males over twenty-one, then the actual
number voting at the meetings, sixteen thousand, would repre¬
sent a little more than one in four of those who were entitled to
vote. In the province of Maine much less interest was shown,
and out of a total population of over fifty-five thousand less
than five hundred voted. In Biddeford, with a population of
over a thousand, but half a score cast any ballots — though this
saving remnant appended to their report to the convention the
note that “ten men may save a city.” 1

The discussion and opposition centred mainly about the
third article of the Bill of Rights, which practically made Con¬
gregationalism the state religion. The article was a step back¬
ward even from the condition theretofore existing with regard
to that church and entrenched it beyond the reach of ordinary
legislation. Members of dissenting sects, who had been free
from taxation for religious purposes, were now to be taxed, with
the privilege of paying the taxes to ministers of their own sects.
Those minorities, however, who could not afford a pastor were
obliged to contribute to the Congregational church, and new
denominations which came in after 1780 had to maintain expen¬
sive lawsuits to obtain recognition as sects in the meaning of
the constitution. The attack on this clause, and the fight for
religious liberty, was led by the Baptists under the leadership
of Isaac Backus, the Baptist leader of his state and the his¬
torian of the sect. Those who were thus fighting for freedom
of conscience and the separation of Church and State — which
fight has not even yet been wholly won in Massachusetts
— were described by one of their adversaries in the Independent

1 Ibid., p. 366 and note.

92

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

Ledger at the time as a “junto, composed of disguised Tories,
British emissaries, profane and licentious Deists, avaricious
Worldlings, disaffected Sectaries, and furious blind bigots” —
an unsavory lot of red herrings, indeed, to be drawn across the
trail by the members of the established church, who were either
disingenuous or blinder bigots than those they accused. Unfor¬
tunately the reformers failed, the Congregational church won,
and the reactionary clause was written into the constitution.

The basis of representation was another point that gave
much trouble. The convention proposed to allow each town
one representative for every two hundred and twenty-five
members over the first one hundred and fifty, but this would
have made a house of unwieldy size. Various plans were
suggested, and the western parts of the state were particularly
active in opposition. The favorite remedy of that section was
to go back to the old system of allowing every town one mem¬
ber, a few two, and Boston four. The dispute was mainly one
between the rival interests of the agricultural west and the
mercantile east, this point coming out frankly in the protests
of two towns, one of which claimed that “the Landage [j/V]
Intrest have not a Proper Weight,” and the other that the in¬
land towns ought to have as great representation as the “Mar-
chantile Towns.” 1

The proposed constitution provided that the property quali¬
fication for those voting for state officials should be doubled as
compared with that under the old charter, and this brought
out much opposition. The convention defended this change
in terms which have been called a “gratuitous insult to the
unpropertied classes” ; but in spite of the fact that all freemen
over twenty-one could vote on the question, it was carried by
two thirds. There was some fear, as was shown in the “Essex
Result,” that persons without property might not show a due
respect for its protection ; but, on the other hand, in the protests
of various towns it was brought out that the polls were as much
in need of protection as was property. This proved to be the
case, for under the new constitution the proportion which
the poll tax bore to the total amount levied rose from thirty

1 Quoted by Morison, op. cit p. 388,

THE REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENTS

93

per cent in 1778 to forty per cent in 1786, the year of Shays’s
Rebellion.

There is no need to specify all the objections raised by one
section or another. The returns were received by the conven¬
tion in June, and the work of tabulating them began. At the
start, such a system was adopted as ensured arbitrarily, from
its operation, a two-thirds vote in favor of all the clauses,
regardless of the actual vote.1 The members of the convention
then voted that the people had accepted the constitution. Dr.
Morison, who has made a more careful examination of the facts
than anyone else, states that “it is difficult to avoid the con¬
clusion that there was not a two-thirds majority for at least
two articles . . . and that the Convention deliberately juggled
the returns in order to make it appear that there was.” Every
article did, however, receive at least a bare majority, and the
need for some constitution was so overwhelming that the con¬
vention may have been justified in its disingenuous and illegal
action, though it is difficult to see why it could not have altered
the two articles which had been voted down by the people.

While the four original New England colonies were thus
adjusting themselves to the new conditions created by the war,
a quite different situation confronted the inhabitants of the
northwestern part of that section, which was known as the
“New Hampshire Grants.” Large numbers of people had
settled to the west of the Connecticut River and north of the
Massachusetts line, largely on grants derived from New Hamp¬
shire. The title to the territory had long been in dispute
between that colony and New York, and the governors of the
latter had claimed the right to re-grant land, although censured
by the English Government for doing so.2 By an order in
Council, 1764, the country in question as far east as the Con¬
necticut River had been adjudged as part of New York, but
without intention of upsetting existing titles already derived
from New Hampshire.3 In no other colony, however, in the
colonial period was corruption more rampant than in that at

1 Morison, op. cit.y pp. 396 ff.y where the reader may find the details of the juggling.

2Hiland Hall, The History of Vermont , (Albany, 1868), pp. 88 /., 105 ff.

3 B. H. Hall, History of Eastern Vermont , (New York, 1858), p. 130,

94

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

the mouth of the Hudson, and the wealthy land-speculating
clique, in collusion with royal governors, continued to disregard
the rights of the inhabitants of the Grants as well as of those
squatters who, technically, had no rights, and the unhappy
settlers had been constantly embroiled for many years before
the Revolution broke.

The great majority of the people seem to have been opposed
to New York control on both economic and political grounds.
The Grants contained the most typical frontier elements to be
found in all New England, with the independent and demo¬
cratic qualities which we find in such societies. On the other
hand, both the government and the social structure of the
Hudson River colony were peculiarly aristocratic and monopo¬
listic. In the remote sections on both sides of the Green Moun¬
tains the settlers had in the beginning managed their own
affairs, and any new control imposed from outside would
naturally prove irksome. The efforts of the cliques and land
sharks from the west to take away their lands or impose rents
greatly strengthened the opposition to the attempted rule of
New York, although there was a smaller party in favor of that
colony. This was composed of those holding New York titles
to their lands or having other economic ties to the west, and of
some conservatives who wished a stronger government control.
All the colonies were split into parties at this period, Tories
and Patriots, seaboard and back-country, rich and poor, mer¬
cantile and farming — and it is a mistake to think of the people
of any of them as forming a unit. The most that can be said
is that strong majorities secured and retained control. In the
Grants the two parties for and against New York added a con¬
flict of interest which appeared nowhere else, and which at one
time threatened civil war. Always during those years it dis¬
tracted the counsels of the people.

The conflict appeared at once when the question came up of
responding to the call for delegates to the Provincial Congress
at New York City. Delegates were elected and sent from some
of the towns, notably Guilford, which voted in 1775 to remain
under the administration of New York. On the other hand,
Ethan Allen and his followers were strongly opposed to any

THE REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENTS 95

recognition of that colony’s rights until such time as “the lives
and property” of the inhabitants could be secured under its
government.1 There was no power in New York, under the
conditions of the beginning of the war, to enforce its claims,
and it was hoped that possibly the new revolutionary govern¬
ment set up there might withdraw pretensions to the settled
lands. This proved to be fallacious. The interests claiming
the lands were in control both of the convention at New York
and of the delegation to Congress. Moreover, since there
could be no appeal from the new government to England, even
that possible hope was cut off. If the settlers submitted to
New York and had their cases tried by New York courts, there
was no chance of escape for any save those who held by New
York titles.

Meanwhile the settlers were governing themselves by com¬
mittees and conventions. The Committees of Safety in the
first year of the war collected taxes, acted as courts in civil and
criminal cases, and were practically all the government that
existed. On January 31, 1775, however, a convention of
twenty-five towns west of the mountains, including Benning¬
ton, was held at Manchester. After reciting the acts of the
New York government, including certain acts of outlawry
against specified Vermonters, the convention voted that the
inhabitants could no “longer subsist in such anarchical Circum¬
stances” nor maintain the political connection with New York
without “effectual Measures among Ourselves.” They pro¬
ceeded to depose from office all of the officials appointed from
New York. It was distinctly stated that there was no inten¬
tion of interfering with the sheriff of Albany County, in which
the towns were included, save in cases relating to lands and
riots, but in those all men were prohibited from assisting him,
at their peril. The officers of the “Green Mountain Boys”
were ordered to see that the soldiers were provided each with
“a good Firelock, and Ball or Buck-Shot answerable, and a
good Tomahawk,” and be ready to enforce the convention.2

1 Hall, Eastern Vermont , p. 244.

2 Records of the Governor and Council of the State of Vermont , (Montpelier, 1874), vol.
II, pp. 491/.

96

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

Just a year later, representatives from practically the same
towns met again, at Dorset, to consider, among other ques¬
tions, whether they should “associate with New York, or by
themselves, in the cause of America,” and whether or not to
send an agent to the Continental Congress. The latter action
was approved, and agents were appointed to carry a remon¬
strance and petition to that body.1 In July the convention met
once more to receive the report of its agents. The presenta¬
tion of the petition had been opposed by the New York dele¬
gates but had been acted upon by Congress, which body, how¬
ever, merely passed a resolution recommending the petitioners
to submit to the neighboring state without prejudice to their
land claims.2 Heman Allen, one of the agents, reported,
nevertheless, that he had had talks with many of the repre¬
sentatives in Congress, who advised that the people of the
Grants should do all possible to repel the British but not to
submit to New York.3 In the convention the first steps were
taken to form a separate jurisdiction for the Grants, and on
January 15, 1777, at an adjourned meeting, a declaration was
adopted with only one dissenting vote, proclaiming that the
territory usually known as the New Hampshire Grants should
thereafter forever be an independent state under the name of
New Connecticut.4 A few months later the name was changed
to Vermont (Green Mountain), as it was found that a settle¬
ment on the Susquehanna River had already chosen the first
one.

The Vermont Declaration of Independence was at once
transmitted to Congress at Philadelphia, where, of course, it
was strongly opposed by New York. A number of the repre¬
sentatives, however, including such men as Samuel Adams and
Roger Sherman, approved of the reasons for the separation of
the new state. Congress, throughout the war, was rather
between the devil and the deep sea in the matter, for a decision
would have antagonized either the powerful state of New York

1 Records of the Governor and Council of the State of Vermont, (Montpelier, 1874),
vol. I, pp. 11 /., 1 6/.; Vermont State Papers, (Middlebury, 1823), pp. 61 ff.

2 Records of Governor and Council, vol. I, p. 20.

3 Ibid., vol. I, pp. 18/.

4 Ibid., vol. I, pp. 4 63/.

THE REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENTS

97

or the population of the Grants, who formed a buffer against
the British on the northern frontier. This reason, as well as
press of more important business, resulted in putting off any
decision until after the war. Meanwhile, the government of
Vermont, without recognition from Congress of its authority,
had to defend itself against the claims of New York and the
insurgent minority of “Yorkers” within its own borders, and
fight the common enemy as well. It is impossible in our
limited space to trace the complicated story in all its ramifica¬
tions.

In the application to Congress the petitioners had noted,
among other points, that New York had recently completed a
new constitution which, should it be put into execution in
Vermont, would force the people there to oppose it by every
means in their power.1 As showing the difference in feeling
between the two states, we may call attention to some of the
features of this constitution, made while the people were fight¬
ing for the doctrinaire rights of man. The governor and
senators — the latter serving four-year terms — were to be
elected by only such freeholders as possessed estates of a value
of £100 over and above all debts, thus disfranchising all of the
population who did not own real estate of that value, including
not only all artisans, laborers, many shopkeepers and petty
merchants, but even most of the smaller farmers. The gov¬
ernor and four senators composed a “Council of Appointment”
which appointed practically all the civil and military officials
in the state, and these held their offices during the pleasure of
the appointing Council. It is obvious that this was a constitu¬
tion devised in the sole interest of the large landowners, and
that the great majority of the people would have under it no
voice in the election of the governor and the upper house or in
the selection of officials. It was as far removed as possible
from the democratic ideas of such a frontier community as
Vermont.

That state adopted its own constitution in 1777, copying to a
great extent that of Pennsylvania, including Benjamin Frank¬
lin’s idea of a single legislative chamber. It went beyond the

1 Records of Governor and Council , vol. I, p. 50.

98

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

Pennsylvania model, however, in a number of respects, and
more than any other state constitution adopted at that time
endeavored to make practical application of the generalities
which the other states and the Declaration of Independence
had left in the air.1 Beginning as usual with the stock phrases
that “all men are born equally free and independent ” and have
certain inalienable rights, it alone went on logically to prohibit
slavery. Moreover, there was no property qualification what¬
ever provided for the suffrage, the governor and legislators
being elected by all males of twenty-one years and upward “of
a quiet and peaceable behaviour.” Although some of the
features had later to be amended, the constitution worked
well and was a model in democratic practice for the other states.
Its liberality is noteworthy when compared with the theories
or practical politics of Massachusetts, New York, or even
Connecticut.

New Hampshire was favorable to the setting up of the new
state, and in correspondence the previous year its governor had
practically acknowledged Vermont to be a sovereign entity.
In most cases those entrusted with its destinies handled the
extremely complicated and delicate situation with consum¬
mate skill, but a blunder was made in 1778 which threatened
serious results. Sixteen towns on the east side of the Connecti¬
cut River, within the limits of New Hampshire, applied for
admission to the new state and were accorded it. Far remote
from the seaboard and in sympathy with their neighbors just
across the river, their action does not seem strange. New
Hampshire, however, naturally objected to this lopping off of a
considerable portion of her territory and population, and her
former friendliness turned to hostility. Complaints were
made to Congress and finally, having seen their tactical error,
the Vermont authorities cancelled the whole transaction in
1 779. 2 Later, however, not only was part of New Hampshire
again incorporated but also some of the towns on the western
border, well within New York. It is difficult to say whether
these actions represented the wisdom of the serpent in providing

1 Records of Governor and Council , vol. I, pp. 83 jf.

2 Ibid., vol. I, pp. 405 jf.

THE REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENTS

99

Vermont with pawns in her game with Congress or not. In
any case, after that body in 1782 had guaranteed New Hamp¬
shire and New York their territories within certain limits,
these were accepted by the Vermonters, and the eastern and
western unions were again dissolved.1

Much mystery hangs over many of the transactions in con¬
nection with the establishment of the fourteenth state, and it is
not clear whether the claim which Massachusetts set up to the
title of a portion of the southeast section of Vermont — which
further complicated matters — was made in good faith or only
to offset those of New York and New Hampshire and prevent
the absorption of the Green Mountain state by them.2 With
the temporary hostility of New Hampshire, with Massachusetts
making her new claim, with the main quarrel with New York
complicated by the strife between independents and “ Yorkers’’
within the state itself, with Congress playing a waiting game,
and with the British on the borders, the way of the leaders in
Vermont was assuredly beset with difficulty and required wary
walking. Not only did the representatives of New York do
all that was possible to prevent Vermont’s claim to indepen¬
dence from being recognized in Congress, but occasionally a
back-fire was set up in the new state itself. In 1779, for
example, ten towns petitioned Congress to restore to them
the rights of which they had been unjustly deprived by the
“usurped government” of the Vermonters, stating that a
majority in some towns and a respectable minority in others
in Cumberland County were in favor of government by New
York.3

In September a resolution was unanimously passed in Con¬
gress which declared that the disputes between the four north¬
ern states had “risen so high as to endanger the internal peace
of the United States,” and that New Hampshire, Massachu¬
setts, and New York should pass laws authorizing Congress to
determine the questions of disputed boundaries.4 Vermont’s

1 Ibid., vol. II, pp. 277/., 379/.

2 Ibid., vol. II, pp. 193 If.

3 Hall, Eastern Vermont , p. 358.

4 Records of Governor and Council , vol. II, pp. 183 ff.

IOO

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

side of the case was brought before the public by Stephen
R. Bradley in a pamphlet entitled Vermont’s Appeal to the
Candid and Impartial World , and the following year Ethan
Allen and Jonas Fay published their Concise Refutation of the
claims of the other states.1 The authorizing laws requested by
Congress were not passed, and that body, both from press of
other business and the fear of burning its fingers, continued to
procrastinate and came to no determination in the matter.
The issue had become deeply involved with the larger one of
the western lands of some of the states forming the union,
which was then one of the main political questions of the day.

The situation of the revolting Vermonters, however, was
critical. Some of the leaders, such as Ethan Allen, had been
outlawed by New York, and they had large estates to lose
should Vermont ever be forced back under the government of
that state. The property interests at stake for those who had
favored independence were large. The “Onion River Land
Company,” in which four of the five stockholders were mem¬
bers of the Allen family, held title to over three hundred thou¬
sand acres, comprising the greater part of eleven townships,
and the Allens had other extensive holdings.2 Should the
United States win the war against England, the new nation
would be strong enough to compel the obedience of Vermont
to its orders, and the result of all the struggle against both New
York and the British might then be that the majority of Ver¬
monters would lose their lands, and the leaders face ruin. The
state had done its full share in fighting the common enemy,
but the other states would give her no assurance that when the
war ended she would not be in a far worse position than when
it began.

It was this situation that forced some of the leaders into the
intrigues with the British to which we must now turn. The
enemy had early seen the possible advantage of fishing in the
troubled waters of the New Hampshire Grants, and of using
the land controversy as a means of securing the allegiance of
the people. It is true that in December 1778 Chief Justice

1 Both are reprinted in Records of Governor and Council , vol. II.

2 J. F. McLaughlin, Matthew Lyon , (New York, 1900), p. 81.

THE REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENTS ioi

William Smith, a New York Tory, wrote to the Earl of Carlisle
that since his earlier letter he had come to despair of getting
Vermont to go over to the British side, but in that same month
Sir Henry Clinton was still hopeful.1 Describing Ethan Allen
as “an infamous character,” he thought that he might be
“made usefull to Government by giving him and his Adherents
the property of all the Lands appropriated to Rebels and mak¬
ing that Country a Separate Government dependent on the
Crown and Laws of Great Britain.” 2 There is certainly much
mystery surrounding the whole question of the confiscations
of the Tory estates, and the secret records of the Court of Con¬
fiscation have never been allowed to see the light. In 1785
Matthew Lyon, who was one of those in the plot, was impeached
by the Vermont legislature in connection with these records,
but when it was hinted that their production would not only
upset land titles but blast reputations, the prosecution was
suddenly and completely dropped.3

Throughout the intrigue, Ira Allen seems to have been the
leader and the one who would have been willing to go the fur¬
thest. Both he and his brothers Levi and Ethan were at times
suspected of disloyalty to the American cause. Indeed, when
family passions ran high, they did not hesitate to accuse each
other. Early in 1779 a quarrel between Ethan and Levi was in
full swing, and Ethan attempted to appropriate Levi’s property
by having him declared an enemy to the state. Levi’s loyalty
at that time was vouched for in testimonials by such men as
Oliver Wolcott, and later Ethan denied that he thought his
brother an absolute traitor, though with characteristic em¬
phasis and profanity, he said, “God d - his luke warm soul.” 4

The family seems to have been a hot-tempered, boastful, swash¬
buckling sort, carving fortunes for themselves out of the
frontier.

The position of such men as the Allens, who had their whole
stake in the country and for whom the unjust and illegal policy

1 Stevens Facsimiles, 109: 1.

2 Ibid.y 549 : 1.

3 McLaughlin, Matthew Lyon , p. 179.

4 Many documents in this controversy are given in the Conn. Courant , April 24, 1779.

102

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

of New York spelled ruin, was in truth a difficult one. The
action of those who had revolted and thrown off the govern¬
ment of New York was quite as justified as was that of all the
colonists in throwing off the government of Great Britain. If
there was a large body in the Grants who were opposed to such
a revolt, so also was there a large body in all the colonies
opposed to the revolt against England. All of the other states
considered themselves as sovereign bodies, wholly independent
of one another, united only in the loosest of bonds for the tem¬
porary and specific purpose of carrying on the war. Vermont
naturally considered herself in the same light, and if Congress
refused to acknowledge that independence, Vermonters could
hardly be considered “traitors” should they protect themselves
and secure better terms from the British than from the Ameri¬
cans. The whole problem was how best to preserve indepen¬
dence and property. Everything points to the belief on the
part of the small group of intriguers that their negotiations
with the enemy would in time bring about recognition by Con¬
gress, but if it had not done so, there is no reason to think that
they would have hesitated to remain within the empire, had
their property and practical independence been safeguarded.
This point of view, however, was not shared by the people of
the state at large.

Negotiations appear to have been opened first through
Colonel Beverly Robinson, a Loyalist in New York and a con¬
fidant of Sir Henry Clinton. In March 1780 he wrote to
Ethan Allen, stating that he believed a large number in Ver¬
mont would be willing to help bring America back to the
empire, and that if the people of that state would return to their
allegiance, they could probably secure terms which would
enable them to set up a separate government, of which Allen
and his friends would be given the management.1

This letter was not received by Allen until July or August,
when he at once communicated the contents to Governor
Chittenden and some close friends, who decided it best to return
no answer. Correspondence, however, was begun with the
British General Haldimand for the exchange of prisoners, and

1 Records of Governor and Council , vol. II, pp. 397 jf.

THE REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENTS

103

a temporary truce on the northern frontier of New York as
well as Vermont. Ira Allen and Joseph Fay were appointed
commissioners from Vermont to meet the British commissioners
for this purpose, and did so in October. It seems to be un¬
questionable that they were also, on both sides, to consider
confidentially the further question of the possibility of Ver¬
mont’s returning to the allegiance of Great Britain, provided
the independence of every other colony was acknowledged.
Haldimand’s instructions to his agents embraced that point
and referred to information previously received as to the likeli¬
hood of Vermont’s accepting the terms.1 Washington had
been informed by Chittenden of the proposed negotiation so far
as the prisoners were concerned, but not as to the other matter.

In October, Captain Justice Sherwood, on behalf of Haldi-
mand, had had an interview with Ethan Allen within the
American lines at Castleton. His business was ostensibly the
exchange of the prisoners, but on a walk before breakfast alone
with Allen he opened the real object of his visit. He told Allen
that he had a matter of importance to divulge, but that before
he did so he must ask him to give his word of honor that no
advantage should be taken of him and that the subject should
be mentioned to no one else while he remained in the country.
Allen replied that he would give the required pledges, provided
“it was no damned Arnold Plan, to sell his Country and his
own Honour by betraying the Trust reposed in him.” 2 Sher¬
wood replied that this was not the case, but that General Haldi-
mand was fully aware of the difficulties between Vermont and
Congress, that he believed Congress was merely duping the
Vermonters “and waited for a favorable opportunity to crush
them and that this was a proper time for them to cast off the
Congress Yoke and resume their former allegiance to the King
of Great Britain, by doing which they would secure to them¬
selves those Privileges they had so long contended for with
New York.” Allen answered, according to the English negoti¬
ator, that “the Proposals so far as they concerned his Personal

1 Ibid., pp. 402 /.

2 Sherwood’s Journal of an Expedition to Negotiate with Vermont, October 1780.
Mss. in Canadian Archives, fol. 44.

104

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

Promotion had not the weight of a straw with him, that he was
not to be purchased at any rate . . . but that the Proposals
seemed naturally to concern the whole Body of Vermont whose
Liberties and Properties for a Number of Years past were much
dearer to him than his own life, he would take them into very
serious consideration.” 1

Later Allen told Sherwood that he would send Colonel Ira
Allen and Major Fay, ostensibly on the cartel business, and that
he would open the other to them, but that “I must not,” wrote
Sherwood, “communicate to them the whole of our conversa¬
tion, must be very cautious not to exhibit the smallest Idea to
them, of anything than neutrality, nor even that to take place
except Congress forced them to it.” 2 Finally the agent
summed up the results of his several conferences as follows :
“General Allen says he finds himself surrounded with Enemies
on every side, the most inveterate in New York — that, he is
heartily weary of war, and wishes once more to enjoy the sweets
of Peace and devote himself to his philosophical studies, that,
he is sincerely attached to the liberties of America, and cannot
cherish the remotest thought of bearing Arms against his
Country, while intuously [ ?] contending for liberty ; and that
nothing (short of the same tyrannical proceedings of Congress
towards Vermont, which Congress at first complained of suffer¬
ing from Great Britain, and the manifest appearance of the
total subvention of the Liberties and Properties of many thou¬
sands of honest people now inhabitants of Vermont) should
ever induce him to Harbour the most distant Idea of deviating
from the Cause he has been so long engaged in, and for which
he has been so great a sufferer — and was he ever so much
inclined to take part with Great Britain it is not in his power to
do it at present — for in the first place should he now make a
declaration of this nature, his own people would cut off his
head, but allowing he could reconcile them to such a plan, they
are by no means able to defend themselves, nor is Genl. Haldi-
mand at present able to send a force sufficient to protect

1 Sherwood’s Journal of an Expedition to Negotiate with Vermont, October 1780.
Mss. in Canadian Archives, fols. 45 /.

2 Ibid. , fol. 47.

THE REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENTS 105

them.”1 He added, however, that as he was persuaded Con¬
gress would never recognize Vermont but was in favor of New
York, he would publish shortly, with the assistance of the gov¬
ernor and council, a manifesto stating the tyrannical proceedings
of Congress, the necessity Vermont was under of declaring her¬
self a neutral Power, and inviting all peoples to trade with her.

Allen said that he expected, as a result of such a proclama¬
tion, that Congress would raise a force against him, in which
case he would seize Albany, and that many would rise to join
him, particularly from western Massachusetts. Help would
then be asked from Canada, and it would be well for Haldimand
to have troops ready to march. Allen would expect to com¬
mand his own forces, Vermont would have to be declared by
the British free of any other province in America, entitled to
choose all her own civil officers, and all land titles from New
Hampshire would have to be freed from any claims of New
York. He added that a revolution of this sort would be a work
of time before the people could be brought around to it.2 The
negotiations were to be continued secretly with the under¬
standing that if Congress should recognize the independence of
Vermont and grant her a seat in that body, they would come to
an end. Although further conferences were planned between
Sherwood, Ira Allen, and Fay, they had to be abandoned until
spring on account of the weather.

In February of the next year, 1781, Allen received another
letter from Robinson on the same subject, and sent both this
and the earlier one to the President of Congress. In trans¬
mitting them, he said truly that they were the only ones he had
ever received from Robinson, but made no mention of the far
more serious direct negotiations with the British army, his
evident purpose being, by an apparent display of candor, to
allay the strong suspicions that had been aroused as to the
loyalty of the Vermont leaders.3 He did say, however, that in
view of her situation Vermont had an indubitable right to make
her own terms with Great Britain.

1 Ibid., fols. 48 /.

2 Ibid., fols. 49-51.

3 Records of Governor and Council , vol. II, pp. 406 ff.

106 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

In May, Ira Allen again met the British commissioners, at
Isle aux Noix, for the ostensible purpose of arranging the cartel
for exchange of prisoners. Little that was new came of this
conference. Allen told the British that Governor Chittenden
and a majority of the leading men were in favor of neutrality
but dared not make a separate peace with England until the
people had been brought around further.1 Allen’s ‘‘dark and
intricate manner of proceeding,” as the British commissioner
termed it, puzzled and offended that gentleman not a little.2
Allen alleged that the Vermonters “hate Congress like the

D - 1, and have not yet a very good opinion of Britain,”

which led Sherwood not much further in the “perplexing
and muffling business.” 3 He told Allen that it looked very
much as though he had come merely for the purpose of
frightening Congress on the one hand and negotiating away
the proper season for a campaign for the British on the
other.4

Allen spun the negotiation along, telling Sherwood that
nothing could be done until a new Assembly met, and suggest¬
ing sending new commissioners in July. He added that the
most that could be done would be to have the Vermonters
declare neutrality during the war, after which they would have
to be subject to the winning power, but that if that power
should not give them a free charter, they would “retire to the

Mountains, turn Savages, and fight the D - and hell and

Human Nature.” 5 Sherwood said that Haldimand had too
much sense to treat such talk as that with anything but con¬
tempt. The conference lasted a little more than two weeks,
and in the course of it Allen agreed to instill the idea of reunion
with Britain into the people as far as possible, and stated that
“he and his Family have large fortunes which they do not
intend to lose, if there is a possibility of saving them. At all

1 Letter of John Sherwood to Captain Mathews, May 8, 1781. Mss. in Canadian
Archives, fol. 18.

2 Same to same, May 1 1, ibid., fol. 23.

3 Ibid., fols. 24/.

4 Same to same, May 11, (second letter), ibid., fols. 26 f.

5 Journal of Sherwood, Isle aux Noix, May 1781. Mss. in Canadian Archives,
fol. 6. Reprinted for the most part, but not entire, in Records of Governor and Council ,
vol. II, pp. 409 ff.

THE REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENTS 107

risks, he is determined that Congress shall not have the parcel¬
ing of his Lands to their avaricious Minions.” 1

Ira Allen was always blunter than the rest of the intriguers,
and in this statement we probably have the exact truth of the
matter, from his standpoint at least. The Allens and others
in the conspiracy had large financial interests at stake. They
intended to safeguard these and their own dominant position,
and the destinies of the state, so far as they could sway them,
were subservient to these ends. On the other hand, it ought
to be pointed out that there was as yet no national feeling in
America and no loyalty to a Federal Union to be compromised.
The attitude of the other thirteen states, moreover, certainly
did not call for any loyalty to them. The Union asked every¬
thing from Vermont in the way of support, and yet would con¬
cede her nothing and promise her nothing. It is impossible
now to probe the motives of all the group of Vermont leaders
who were in the intrigue. When Ira Allen declared on his
honor that he preferred union with Great Britain and impli¬
cated Ethan in that statement, he may or may not have been
telling the truth. Neither of the brothers paid much attention
to that when it served their purpose to ignore it. When Allen
said bluntly that what he was after was at all costs to save his
property, he was probably nearer the truth than at any other
time in the negotiations. The delay in these had by now irri¬
tated Haldimand and he wrote to Sherwood, through his secre¬
tary, that unless something definite could be had all commu¬
nication should cease.2 His attitude throughout had been
perfectly open and honorable. He had no authority, he said,
to make a Treaty of Neutrality, and Vermont would either
have to unite with Great Britain or remain at enmity with her.

Meanwhile the Vermont Assembly was becoming uneasy at
the persistent rumors of negotiations with the enemy, for, in
spite of the small number of persons in the plot, it was a matter
of general suspicion throughout all the colonies. In June an
inquiry was resolved upon in the legislature, and both the
governor and Ira Allen were interrogated. Allen concealed

1 Records of Governor and Council , vol. II, p. 414.

2 Ibid., vol. II, p. 421.

108 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

his dealings, convinced the legislature that there was nothing
afoot, and must have blushed, had he been capable of it, when
complimented by them “for his open and candid conduct.”1
Negotiations were continued through the summer, and various
incidents tended to keep suspicion alive also.

General John Stark, who had been ordered by Washington
to assume command of the northern department, wrote to
Governor Chittenden that, although the people of Vermont
were zealously devoted to the American cause, there were
reasonable suppositions that there were lurking traitors.
These, he said, should be severely punished as soon as discov¬
ered, evidently wholly unaware that the very official to whom
he was writing was himself concerned in the intrigue.

Allen continued during the rest of the war to negotiate with
Haldimand, and even in July 1782, eight months after the
surrender of Cornwallis, he wrote that it would be advisable for
Haldimand to send agents into New York and the New Eng¬
land provinces to induce as many Loyalists as possible to settle
in Vermont, and to get as many of the principal men in New
England as he could to buy tracts of land on the Vermont
frontier so as to engage their interest. Finally the news of
peace in 1783 brought the negotiation to an end, although Con¬
gress had taken no action, and the fate of Vermont as an inde¬
pendent commonwealth still remained unsettled.

1 Records of Governor and Council , vol. II, p. 427.

CHAPTER V

GROWING UNREST

Dispute between Connecticut and Pennsylvania — Western
Land Claims — Effect of Peace on Business — Relations with
England — West India Trade — State Tariffs — English Com¬
petition — Financial Crisis — Federal Impost — Rhode Island
Paper Money — Resumption of Specie Payment — Debts and
Taxes — Increasing Violence

As early as March 1776 John Adams had written to General
Gates that “ the success of this war depends on a skilful steerage
of the political vessel. The difficulty lies in forming particular
constitutions for particular colonies, and a continental consti¬
tution for the whole. . . . Thirteen colonies, under such a
form as Connecticut, or one not quite so popular, leagued to¬
gether in a faithful confederacy, might bid defiance against all
the potentates of Europe. ” 1 Adams at this time looked upon
the various colonies as separate nations, wholly independent
of one another, as, indeed, did practically all the leaders of
thought and the people generally.

New England, partly from geographical position and partly
from the old Puritan notion of a chosen people, has always been
particularistic and sectional in its views. The voice that gave
expression to a national outlook was heard from the South.
Even there, however, Patrick Henry’s impassioned utterance
in 1774 met with but little response. “Where are your land¬
marks, your boundaries of colonies ? The distinctions between
Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders
are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an American,” he
thundered; but instead of the distinctions between colonies

1 Works , vol. I, p. 207.

IIO

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

growing less as the years of war continued, they became, in
some respects, more marked and bitter.

In the last chapter we followed in brief outline the contest
between the people of the New Hampshire Grants and New
York, threatening war between that colony and the nascent
state of Vermont, with Massachusetts and New Hampshire
participants in the dispute. At the same time Connecticut
and Pennsylvania were in armed conflict and war was portended
between them also. We have already noted the activities of the
Susquehanna Company, which had been organized to exploit
certain lands on the river of that name to which they laid claim
in Pennsylvania.1 The dangerous course pursued by this
company had split the people of Connecticut into two parties,
one insisting that the charter extended to the “South Sea,” —
that is, three thousand miles westward to the Pacific, — and
the other accepting the limits of the New York boundary. The
question was purely one of economic exploitation, those inter¬
ested in the company speculation wishing to have the colonial
government enforce their claims to the lands, whereas the other
party, foreseeing much trouble, some danger, and certain ex¬
pense, wished to have the government steer clear of the whole
matter.

In 1774 the legislature had reversed its former attitude and
come to the support of the company by declaring Connecti¬
cut’s title valid, and by making the new settlements part of the
County of Litchfield. This action followed upon a conference
between commissioners sent from Connecticut to Governor Penn,
to endeavor to arrange a temporary adjustment of the dispute
by agreeing to a provisional boundary line for administration.
Penn, denying that the Connecticut claim had any validity,
declined to do this and insisted that the Connecticut intruders
evacuate the territory entirely until a legal decision could be
obtained.2 It was claimed that there were then nearly two
thousand Connecticut emigrants in the Valley. The contro¬
versy not only continued between the two governments but re¬
sulted in bloody encounters in the disputed territory itself. On

1 Adams, Revolutionary New England , /(5p/-/77<5, pp. 204, 217, 260, 282, 413.

20. J. Harvey, A History of Wilkes-Barre , (Wilkes-Barre, 1909), vol. II, pp. 779 /.

GROWING UNREST

hi

September 28, 1775, some of the Yankees were attacked by a
force of “Pennamites,” who outnumbered them five to one
and who broke up one of the Connecticut settlements.1 The
Pennsylvania Assembly resolved to lay the matter before Con¬
gress, asking the aid of the body to prevent further encroach¬
ment by the Yankees until the controversy should be settled by
the King and Council. Governor Trumbull of Connecticut also
wrote to Congress, asking them to find some means to quiet the
dispute until the more important matter of the war with Eng¬
land should have been terminated. Congress, however, dodged
the issue, as in the case of New York and Vermont, and merely
resolved in November that the assemblies of both colonies
should be asked to take steps to prevent hostilities between
their citizens.

The following month war again broke out in the Wyoming
region, and on Christmas Day occurred the Battle of Rampart
Rocks, in which the Yankees got the best of the Pennamites.2
About a year later the Connecticut legislature passed an act
erecting the town of Westmoreland in Pennsylvania — which
had formerly been made a part of Litchfield County, as just
stated — into a separate county by itself. Neither Pennsyl¬
vania nor Connecticut, owing partly to the dispute over juris¬
diction, was able properly to protect the settlers against the
British, and on July 3, 1778 the settlements were wiped out in
an attack by British and Indians under Major John Butler.3
Hundreds of the inhabitants were never heard of again after the
“Wyoming Massacre,” although some of them straggled back
from time to time to retake possession of their ruined homes.

Meanwhile, Congress had made slow progress with the plan
for a Confederation. It was not until November 1777, by
which time it had lost some of its ablest members and much of
the confidence of its constituents, that it was ready to offer a
definite plan to be accepted by the several states. The details
of the development and nature of the Articles of Confederation
belong to the domain of national rather than sectional history.

1 Ibid., vol. II, p. 843.

2 Ibid., vol. II, pp. 859 f.

3 Ibid., vol. II, pp. 954^.; Pickering, Timothy Pickering , vol. II, pp. 221 jf.

Ill

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

and we are here interested in their adoption merely with refer¬
ence to local interests. One of the most difficult points in dis¬
pute in drafting the Articles — the question of weight of votes
of the large as compared with the small states — was decided,
after much discussion, on the basis of equal representation.
The long delay in ratification, however, was not due to this
but to the question of the claims to western lands, such as
those set up by Connecticut and Massachusetts. These two
were the only New England colonies involved, the other im¬
portant claimants being New York and Virginia.

These western lands were deemed of great potential value,
and it was thought that the states possessing them could rapidly
pay off their share of the cost of the war by disposing of them
to settlers, leaving the smaller states which had no such claims,
such as Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland,
heavily burdened with debts and taxes, and thus likely to lose
their inhabitants to the larger colonies which held the west.
It was felt that those latter colonies would not have been able
to make their claim good had it not been for the common efforts
of all in winning the war, and that therefore they should re¬
linquish their claims to the states as united in the Confederacy,
for the common benefit of all. Rhode Island, it may be noted
in view of her later recalcitrancy as to the Federal constitution,
agreed to signing the Confederation within a few months, but
it was not until after Connecticut, New York, and Virginia had
taken steps to cede their claims to the general government
that Maryland signed the Articles in March 1781, and that the
Confederation went into effect.1

One of the articles provided that Congress should have power
to appoint courts of arbitration to settle boundary disputes
between the states, and Pennsylvania promptly asked for an
adjudication of the Susquehanna dispute with Connecticut.
The court met at Trenton, and in January 1783 handed down
a decision that all the lands claimed by Connecticut in the
Susquehanna region belonged to Pennsylvania.2 This settled

1 Cf, H. B. Adams, Maryland.' s Influence upon Land Cessions to the United States ,
(Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies, 1885), passim .

2 Journals of Continental Congress , vol. XXIV, pp. 6 jf., 31.

GROWING UNREST

M3

the matter, though James Madison noted that “the delegates
from Connecticut were more captious on the occasion than
was consistent with a perfect acquiescence.” 1 The court did
not, however, determine the larger question of the state’s claim
to western territory, and Madison probably had this in mind
when he said that “ in a national view it is not perhaps advisable
to invalidate the title of this State, however defective it may
be, until a more important controversy is terminated.” 2 It
was evidently felt that it might be well, in case Connecticut
could be induced to cede her western lands to the confederated
states, that her title to them should not be called in question.
She did finally surrender her claims to the Federal government,
though not until 1786, and received as compensation, six years
later, a tract of about five hundred thousand acres, known as
the u Western Reserve of Connecticut,” in what is now north¬
eastern Ohio. The year of the cession marked almost the
lowest ebb of the power of the Confederation, and it was felt
by many that Connecticut had taken advantage of the situation
to get a clear title to a definite tract of land in exchange for
a highly questionable one to the somewhat absurd strip sixty
miles wide and three thousand miles long. Washington wrote
that to his mind the compromise was a disadvantageous one
for the Union and that might had triumphed over right. In
Congress it was said that the advocates of the plan urged its
adoption because “the claim of a powerful state, although
unsupported by right, was, under the circumstances, a disa-
greable thing.” 3

Toward the end of the war, the situation as regarded Vermont
had made no advance, and Congress was more hostile than
ever to her pretensions of independence. At the session of
November 1782, Madison noted that the temper of that body
“was less favorable than on any preceding one.” 4 The belief
was gaining ground rapidly — for reasons given in the last
chapter — that leading Vermonters were traitors and should be

1 Writings , Gaillarcl Hunt, ed., (New York, 1900), vol. I, p. 303.

2 Ibid., pp. 261 ff.

3 Washington, Writings, (Ford), vol. XI, p. 44 and note.

4 Writings , vol. I, p. 261.

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

114

taken into custody.1 Rhode Island alone stood by the new
state, though it was openly hinted in Congress that this was
because of interests in certain lands. By February 1783,
however, there seems to have been a more conciliatory spirit,
and it was said that both Washington and the principal men in
New England supported Vermont’s pretensions.2

The political situation in New England when peace was
signed at Paris, September 3, 1783, may be briefly summarized.
New Hampshire had a new and untried constitution. That
of Massachusetts, adopted three years before, was especially
designed to favor the lawyers and merchants and “directed
toward something like quarter-deck efficiency in government,
and the protection of property against democratic pirates.” 3
Rhode Island was acting under its old charter, but was torn
by the ravages of war and the British occupation. Connecticut
was split into parties, and the legal validity of her constitution
had been questioned. Vermont was acting the part of an
independent state, but her claims were nowhere recognized.
It was under these conditions as to government that the great
economic and social forces let loose by the war and the changes
following peace had to be guided and controlled.

With the coming of peace, the commercial life of New Eng¬
land had to be built up anew. Army contracts and privateer¬
ing ceased abruptly. Even before the treaty was signed, the
mercantile firm of Thurston & Jenkins of Rhode Island wrote to
their correspondents that “the full confidence all Ranks of
People puts in this News of Peace has stagnated Business ex¬
ceedingly.” 4 A few months later Samuel A. Otis of Boston, the
wealthy merchant whom we have noted as handling large
government contracts, was bankrupt. The transition from
war to peace is always difficult, but in New England after the
Revolution it was peculiarly so, as it necessitated fundamental
changes in almost all her commerce. The great empires of that
day laid stress upon trade rather than the political relations

1 Writings, vol. I, p. 276.

2 Ibid., pp. 276, 281, 292, 356.

3 S. E. Morison, The Maritime History of Massachusetts, (Boston, 1921), p. 28.

4 R. I. Commerce, vol. II, p. 172.

GROWING UNREST

* fS

between colonies and mother country. By the signing of the
treaty of peace and the acknowledgment of the independence
of the United States, the former colonies ceased to be integral
parts of a great trade system and became simply a foreign
nation. The “mercantile theory” of empire was not confined
to the English, but was the common doctrine of the times,
even among the vast majority of the American colonists. It
was not strange, therefore, that as soon as the war was over
France annulled such decrees as had given us special privileges
while serving as her ally, and that Spain closed many of her
ports to our ships.

According to contemporary doctrine, the policy adopted by
the British Government can only be considered as liberal with
reference to the United States, whatever may be thought of
its wisdom from her own standpoint. We have had frequent
occasion to note in the earlier volumes that our colonial fore¬
fathers often showed the natural human inclination to eat
their cake and have it too, to retain all the advantages of being
integral parts of an empire while acting as though they were
independent of it when such action suited their desires or purses.
Now that they had seceded they seemed to think that they were
still entitled to the trading privileges that membership con¬
ferred. Not a single responsible statesman in Europe at that
time believed in free trade, though occasional writers advocated
it.1 In America it was not discussed as an economic theory,
but merely asserted as a right whenever it appeared to offer
profitable employment to American ships. Thus, in 1783,
David Howell of Rhode Island wrote of the prohibition of the
West Indian trade that “we have a natural right to carry our
own trade, and a natural right will create, in the event, an
interest in our favor which will secure to us the exercise of this
right.” 2

The dogmatic assertion of “natural right” might be made
to cover, in America, anything which one wished it to do, but
in reality there was no escape from the logic of the situation

1 C/., e.g.y [Thos. Pownall] A Memorial Most Humbly Address'd to the Sovereigns of
Europe . . . (London, 1780), pp. ii3jf.

2 Staples, Rhode Island in the Continental Congress , p. 462.

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

1 1 6

as expressed by one of the numerous pamphleteers who soon
took part in the controversy. “It is in the light of a foreign
nation that America must henceforward be viewed/’ wrote
Lord Sheffield. “It is the situation she herself has chosen by
asserting her independence, and the whimsical definition of
a people sui generis is either a figure of rhetoric which conveys
no distinct idea, or the effort of cunning to unite at the same
time the advantages of two inconsistent characters. By
asserting their independence, the Americans have renounced
the privileges, as well as the duties, of British subjects. If, in
some instances, as in the loss of the carrying trade, they feel
the inconvenience of their choice, they can no longer complain ;
but if they are placed on the footing of the most favored nation,
they must surely applaud our liberality and friendship, with¬
out expecting that, for their emolument, we should sacrifice
the navigation and the naval power of Britain.” 1 In his
larger work, published the next year, Sheffield much expanded
his arguments in favor of retaining the system of the Navigation
Act. It had originally prevented the Dutch, he said, from
becoming the carriers of British commerce, and the “violation
or relaxation of that act in favor of the West-India Islands,
or the American States, will give that advantage to the New-
Englanders, and encourage to the greatest degree the marine
of America, to the ruin of our own.”

By a great diplomatic victory scored by John Adams, one
of the commissioners to negotiate peace, Americans had been
given the right to fish on all the banks and along the shores
of British North America as well as within the Gulf of St.
Lawrence, with liberty to land, for curing and drying, on any
unsettled portions of the coast.2 But although the fishing
grounds were thus left open for the New England fishermen, the
markets to which they had been accustomed to carry their
product before the war were now largely closed to them. The
trade relations between the new nation and the British Empire

1 Observations on the Commerce of the American States with Europe and the West Indies
. . . by an American, (Philadelphia, 1783). This was by Lord Sheffield, who chose
to cloak himself under this anonymity. The same sentence appears, p. 2, in his larger
work under the same title, (London, 1784).

2 Adams, Works , vol. Ill, pp. 332 /.; McFarland, New England Fisheries , p. 127.

GROWING UNREST

iiy

were defined by Parliament in an Act for facilitating Trade and
Intercourse, which was renewed annually until the end of the
century.1 The first promulgation of this, however, was soon
followed by a proclamation, July 3, 1783, which absolutely
forbade American vessels from participating in the carrying
trade of the West Indies, and denied the privilege to Americans
of sending salted meats or fish to the islands, even in British
vessels.2 Whale oil was no longer allowed to be imported into
England, and the loss of the only market for that important
commodity resulted in a decline of the whaling fleet of Massa¬
chusetts from three hundred vessels before the war to one
hundred in 1789.3

In England the defenders of the Navigation Acts and the
closed mercantile system argued very much as did George
Chalmers, who claimed that England could supply the islands
with all the lumber needed and that Nova Scotia could raise
sufficient wheat for their consumption. The proclamation,
he said, provided that the West Indians should be cared for
in the “most reasonable manner,” and he scolded them violently
because they preferred to “be accommodated in the most profit¬
able” “If the West Indians expect protection from Great
Britain, they must study to be useful to her.” “By the con¬
sent of civilized communities,” he said, in another place, “it
was early established . . . that the sovereignty as well as
trafflck of every plantation should exclusively belong to the
State which had formed it”; and the West Indian policy, as
he truly showed, was one which Britain “continued rather than
adopted.” 4

From the standpoint of business and not imperial theory,
however, it was at once disputed in England that the West
India Islands could be provided with necessary supplies within
the empire. One writer showed that these could not possibly
be provided at any economically profitable cost elsewhere than

1 23 Geo. Ill, chap. ix.

2 The proclamation has been reprinted many times, e.g ., by Brian Edwards,
Thoughts on the late Proceedings of Government . . . (London, 1784), pp. 7 ff.> note.

3 Johnson, Domestic and Foreign Commerce , vol. II, p. 10.

4 Opinions on Interesting Subjects of Public Law and Commercial Policy Arising from
American Independence , (London, 1784), pp. 58, 75, 78, 120.

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

1 18

from the United States. Another wrote that the annual supplies
received from Canada and Nova Scotia in the British West
Indies on an average for the years 1771-73 amounted to only
£3750, whereas they derived from the rest of America supplies
to the amount of £997, 034.1 Brian Edwards, one of the leading
English authorities on the islands, said that as soon as the proc¬
lamation was published in the islands the prices of American
supplies had jumped three hundred per cent.2 It was also
pointed out that the American vessels employed in the trade
were small sloops and schooners of from a hundred to a hun¬
dred and fifty tons, operated by five or six men and a boy,
making several trips a year, and that the English could not
compete on account of the higher cost of shipbuilding and
longer trips.3 The policy of the proclamation was opposed
in every way possible by the West Indians themselves,4 and
the whole problem was a continuation of that which we have
already discussed at length in its colonial aspects.5

England was wholly justified in her attitude as to the ex¬
clusion of American vessels from this trade. It was merely a
question of expediency, and it seems probable that by her
policy she did succeed in strengthening her merchant marine
and naval forces and was thus better prepared for the great
struggle with France early in the next century.6 Colonials,
however, are never very observant of imperial regulations that
run counter to their own local interest, and American ship¬
owners had found the West Indian governors, customs officials,
and planters on their side when caught smuggling goods into
the islands. It is difficult to say how far this trade may have
been revived in the years immediately following the Revolu-

1 A Free and Candid Review of a Tract entitled 1 Observations on the Commerce of the
American States' . . . (London, 1784), pp. 40^. Cf. [Richard Champion] Considera¬
tions on the Present Situation of Great Britain and the United States , (London, 1784),
pp. 84/.

2 Thoughts on the late Proceedings , op. cit ., pp. 4, 6.

3 Reflections on the Proclamation of the 3 d of July 1783 relative to the Trade between the
United States of America and the West India Islands , (London, 1783), p. 5. Cf. Wm.
Bingham, A Letter from an American , (Philadelphia, 1784).

4 Qf‘> e-g-> the resolutions of the Committee of West India Planters and Merchants,
April 11, 1783, given in Thoughts on the late Proceedings , pp. 45 /.

5 Adams, Revolutionary New England , 1691-1776 , loc. cit.

6 Domestic and Foreign Commerce , op. cit.y vol. I, p. 130.

GROWING UNREST

ll9

tion.1 Vessels would sail to certain French “free ports/’ such
as Martinique, and thence smuggle goods into the English
islands. Others sailed under old certificates of British registry,
the Spanish flag, or forged passes.

It would seem, however, that the prohibition was effective to
a considerable extent, and that in the years immediately follow¬
ing the war American merchants were severely handicapped by
the impossibility of trading directly and openly with their old
customers in what had been the most important branch of
commerce. It was still thought that the West India trade was
absolutely essential, in order to secure the specie or bills of
credit necessary to pay for imports from Europe in the absence
of sufficient direct exports; and this was true until wholly
new channels of trade were opened up some years later. The
decrease in the island trade also affected that along the coast,
for the New Englanders had been accustomed to using West
India goods to pay for the staples bought in the southern colo¬
nies. With the decline in commerce, the shipbuilding industry
also suffered a severe setback. Before the war, about one
hundred and twenty-five vessels had been built annually in
Massachusetts. This output had declined to fifteen or twenty
by 1785.2

For some months, in the riot of extravagance following peace,
the accumulations of specie made during the struggle served
to meet the needs of exchange with England for the imported
goods which flooded the markets. Even before the signing of
the treaty, the Boston newspapers had commented bitterly
upon the return of British mercantile activity. “With what
true pleasure,” commented sarcastically the Evening Post,
“must we see those commercial advantages so warmly expected
from a peace, not only flowing in their wonted channels ; but
even monopolized by the factors of such very sincere partizans

1 Edward Channing says that “by 1786, it had become evident that the Order in
Council closing the West Indian trade to American shipping was practically a dead
letter, except when Nelson with the Boreas was in sight.” Hist, of U. S., vol. Ill,
p. 421. On the other hand, Johnson denies this, and states that the trade did not
revive after the war and that the development of American commerce up to 1789 was
due to the reestablishment of trade with England and the building up of new trade with
the Mediterranean and the Far East. Domestic and Foreign Commerce , vol. I, p. 130.

2 Morison, Maritime History , p. 34.

120

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

of American independence as the Lanes and Dickersons of
London.” 1 In similar tone the Freeman s Journal said that
“all the specie in the country is vanishing; the people cannot
pay their debts nor their taxes . . . but the British trade must
not be discouraged.” 2

The New England seaboard states, with the exception of
Connecticut, which had had no European trade before the
war, all adopted tariffs designed not only for revenue but for
protection of certain home industries, and which discriminated
against goods carried in British bottoms.3 Rhode Island levied
duties on goods imported in British vessels which were three
times those on goods brought in under other flags, and later
excluded British ships wholly from her ports. Massachusetts,
however, passed the most numerous tariff laws of any of the
states. The Confederation had no power to enact trade legis¬
lation or impose duties, and the situation soon became con¬
fused by the multiplicity of state statutes. Moreover, British
goods continued to pour in, the return of peace having led to an
era of unwarranted hopefulness, extravagance, and extended
credit. The position was well realized in England. “The Amer¬
icans are relapsing into their former luxury and enjoyments,”
wrote one observer. “The war precluded them for a time, but
a spirit of indulgence now breaks forth, with increased force,
and the orders for goods which have been lately transmitted,
are filled with as many superfluities as necessaries. Whether
this is a wise conduct in such states, must be the consideration
of their own government; but it will not be a wise conduct in
us, if we neglect the means of drawing them into that de¬
pendence which their trade will produce.” 4

In 1785 the Massachusetts Centinel had numerous articles
dealing with the imports and activities of the British merchants.
The tone of these articles strongly resembles that of many
during the years of early agitation, and some of them, signed
“Joyce, Junior,” recall the days of the Stamp Act riots.

1 Boston Evening Post, Oct. 12, 1782.

2 Quoted ibid., July 13, 1782.

3 A. A. Giesecke, American Commercial Legislation before 1789 , (Univ. of Pa., 1910),
pp. 125/.

4 Champion, Considerations on the Present Situation , p. 151.

GROWING UNREST

in

“Those infamous paricides, the Refugees and English Factors,”
said one of them, “are permitted quietly to contaminate the
air of a land of Freedom — to impede the wheels of government
with their gold — and to ruin our Merchants and Tradesmen
by their Importations, our Trade is suffering every restriction,
and as a nation we are treated with every indignity and insult
that ignorance, ingratitude or voraciousness can invent.” 1
The following week the picture was painted with more detail.
Ruin was coming. Our money had all gone to pay for Euro¬
pean imports of the past three years. The whale fishery, which
formerly placed £800,000 in England, was ruined by the English
duty of £18 sterling per ton of oil, depriving Massachusetts of
half her means of remittance. The regulations prohibiting
American shipping in the West Indies and elsewhere closed all
vents for the commodities produced in New England. Amer¬
ican credit in England had gone completely, but a swarm of
British agents, British factors, and British merchants were
sent among us and were daily increasing.2 A few days later
a meeting of protest was held by the American merchants
at Faneuil Hall, at which drastic resolves were adopted.
It was voted that, as there was no commercial treaty with
Great Britain, a petition be sent to Congress “for laws
putting our commerce on an equality,” and it was planned to
communicate with committees in other seaports. The mer¬
chants pledged themselves to buy no goods from the English
factors, to prevent, as far as they could, others from doing so,
and not to lease them any warehouse or to employ any persons
who helped them with their carting.3

These resolutions, however, seem to have been of little effect,
and a fortnight later an article appeared advising violent
methods of coercion. “We have assembled ! We have passed
our resolves ,” it proclaimed, in the style of 1765. “We have
declared our determinations ! But my countrymen, are words
our only weapons ? Is the flame extinct which roused us to
assemble ? . . . Was our danger real or imaginary — if real,

1 Massachusetts Centinel , April 9, 1785.

2 Ibid., April 1 3, 1785.

3 Ibid., April 20, 1785.

122

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

the question is have we remedied the evil ? While our resolves
are treated with indignity ! . . . We threatened the British
Factors; but now we are in duty bound, not only to threaten
but to execute on all those daring individuals of our own, who
with the most consummate arrogance daily violate our resolu¬
tions r 1

Even the merchants from the neighboring colony of Con¬
necticut were threatened. Is it not hard, another article con¬
tinued, when the Boston merchants are pledged to buy nothing
from British factors, “to see the Connecticut Gentry in and
out (in swarms) at their stores every hour of the day ? . . . A
word to the wise is sufficient. Let them keep their names from
the public and themselves from - .” 2

It is interesting to trace this spirit of intolerance and forcible
coercion that appears again and again throughout the entire
history of Massachusetts. Whether the questions in dispute
were religious, political, or economic, whether they were as
real as Land Banks or as metaphysical as witches, the people
of that state have always shown a much greater tendency than
in any other part of New England to descend to the arguments
of threatenings, intimidation, physical violence, bloodshed,
and mob action. It is a psychological trait that must be ad¬
mitted, though it cannot be explained.

Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire con¬
tinued their experiments in legislation discriminating against
British vessels, and at one time no such vessels were allowed to
land goods in any of the three states.3 By 1785, however, the
financial crisis had become acute. Elbridge Gerry wrote that
“the scarcity of money in consequence of our excessive and
extravagant importations of British frippery has occasioned
stagnation of trade, stopping discounts at the bank, and other
embarrassments and confusion.” 4 The bank was undoubtedly
the Massachusetts Bank, which had been incorporated the
previous year and which was the first in the state.

1 Mass. Centinel , April 30, 1785.

2 Ibid., April 23, 1785.

3 Giesecke, Commercial Legislation , p. 137, note.

4 Austin, Gerry , vol. I, p. 470.

GROWING UNREST

I23

It is probable that the strong anti-English agitation had its
ground partly in the political campaign that was then under
way, but of the genuineness of the financial crisis there is no doubt.
The state treasury was almost empty, large arrears of taxes
were due, and mutterings were beginning to be heard from the
distressed people of the rural counties as well as from the sea¬
port merchants and state creditors. John Hancock, who had
retained the Revolutionary popularity which he always care¬
fully fostered among the masses by a judicious use of his wealth,
was Governor. Sensing a coming storm, he resigned at the
end of January 1785, with the intention, apparently, of having
the Lieutenant-Governor, Thomas Cushing, whom he could
control, elected to his place in the spring.1 The plan failed, and
after an extremely abusive campaign James Bowdoin was
chosen Governor. As neither candidate received a majority,
the election had been thrown into the legislature. The lower
House gave a large majority to Cushing as the “popular party”
candidate, whereas Bowdoin was chosen by the Council, and
in this the House subsequently acquiesced. Bowdoin, owing
to his English connections, was calumniated as a Tory, and the
real contest was between him as the leader of the conservative
lawyer-merchant party and Hancock as the idol of the people.
It is probable that the latter, who was neither very able nor
courageous, felt that his party was going too far, and had no
desire to ride out the storm at the helm. Bowdoin seems to
have been put in by the conservatives, who were becoming
alarmed by the unrest that was rapidly developing.

In his first message to the legislature the new Governor
suggested that a convention should be called from all the states
to grant greater powers to Congress, including that of regulat¬
ing foreign commerce. The legislature, in compliance, passed
a series of resolutions advocating the Governor’s recommenda¬
tion, and Bowdoin forwarded them to the Massachusetts dele¬
gates in Congress. Those delegates, however, S. Holten,
Gerry, and King, took the extraordinary step of not presenting

1 Gerry thought he never intended that the resignation should be accepted but that
he would be pressed to remain in office. King, Rufus King , vol. I, p. 76. Cf. A. E.
Morse, The Federalist Party in Massachusetts to the Year 1800, (Princeton, 1909), pp. 27 ff.

124

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

them but, instead, of remonstrating with the Governor.1 In a
long letter they stated their objections to the course pursued
and evinced their dread of a stronger Federal government.
They admitted that “more power in Congress” had indeed
been the cry from all quarters, but feared that “plans have been
artfully laid, and vigorously pursued which had they been
Successful, we think would inevitably have changed our Repub¬
lican Governments into balefull Aristocracies.” 2 The whole
letter was strongly anti-Federal, and the lines in Massachusetts
were already thus being drawn for the later battle over the
Federal Constitution. Nathaniel Dane, a member of the
legislature, in a letter to the delegates stated that that body
had suggested the proposed convention because it seemed to
be the general opinion that the present federal compact was
defective, more particularly as regarded the powers of taxation
and regulation of trade. “But,” he continued, “how far the
yeomanry or the body of the people of this State would accede
to any proposition that might be proposed by a Convention for
enlarging the powers of Congress in matters of taxation in any
form, I have mighty doubts.” The cause of the original sug¬
gestion, he said, was “the embarrassments our gentlemen in
trade have for some time experienced,” mainly due to Great
Britain. The more the legislature considered, however, the less
sanguine they felt as to the people being willing to agree, and
therefore they dropped the matter.3 The explosion of the forces
of economic discontent in the next two years was to broaden
the desire for a stronger government, which at present was felt
mainly by the wealthier merchant class, and which, as Dane
points out, was first brought about by the external pressure
from England.

The question of the national finances had already brought
about serious dissension in two of the New England states.
The old system of requisitions, to which the colonists had clung
so desperately when still dependent upon England, had proved
as frail a reed for public finance to lean upon under the confeder-

1 Morse, Federalist Party , pp. 30/.

2 King, Rufus King , vol. I, pp. 63, 65.

3 Rufus King , op. cit ., vol. I, p. 69.

GROWING UNREST

I25

acy as under the empire. In 1782 South Carolina was the only
state in the Union that paid her full quota of the national ex¬
penses. Rhode Island paid but one fourth of hers and New
Hampshire only one one hundred and twenty-first part of hers.1
In 1781 Congress had recommended to the states that it was
absolutely necessary that it should be empowered by them to
lay a duty of five per cent ad valorem on all imports, — with
certain exceptions, — in order to discharge the principal and
interest of the public debt.

Connecticut and New Hampshire acquiesced within a few
months, so urgent did the necessity appear. Massachusetts
gave her consent the following year ; but Rhode Island refused,
and it is from this point that her opposition to the Federal
government may be dated. Most of the leaders in that state
realized the need for parting with a certain portion of the state’s
rights if the general government were to survive, but the people
were narrowly parochial in their views, and found a champion
in the person of David Howell, a professor in Brown University.2
His objections were for the most part economic. He feared
that the merchant and consumer would pay all the tax, that
Rhode Island, from her peculiar position as mainly an importing
state, would pay more than her proportion, and that she would
suffer from the high prices charged by her neighbors. He
admitted the duty of the state to pay taxes, but claimed that
only its own legislature could prescribe the method of raising
them.3 The members of Congress from the state, who had
been favorable to the impost, were retired and Howell and
John Collins, the future paper-money governor, were among
those chosen. In October 1782 the Assembly voted unani¬
mously against granting Congress the power that it had asked.
Howell declared that the opposition of the people to British
oppression would not rank the state higher in the annals of the
country than this resistance to the impost, and he was probably
sincere.

1 W. G. Brown, Life of Oliver Ellsworth , (New York, 1905), p. 87.

2 F. G. Bates, Rhode Island and the Formation of the Union , (Columbia Univ.
Studies, 1898), pp. 72 /.

3 Ibid.) pp. 76 /. ; Staples, R. I. in the Cont. Cong ., pp. 387 /.

126

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

The people of Rhode Island throughout all their history had
developed a strong individualism. It was not surprising,
therefore, though unfortunate, that the state’s most popular
delegate in Congress should have been the strongest proponent
in that body, at this period, of states’ rights. Howell more
and more inveighed against the danger of centralization. His
constant refrain was that “if the states give up to Congress the
power of raising money from them, and of disposing of that
money, their particular sovereignty will, in fact, be all absorbed
in one mighty sovereignty, against the abuses of which they will
retain only the power of complaining, and receiving for answer
that they have no remedy.” 1

The question of the impost became mixed with that of the
cession of the public lands, from which it was hoped that the
national debt might be paid. The friends of the impost kept
up the fight and finally, in 1786, when the position of the Con¬
federation was absolutely desperate, they succeeded in forcing
consent from the Rhode Island Assembly. The conditions
of trade were largely responsible for the altered point of view,
and also the changed membership of the House. The long
fight, however, had made much bitterness and divided the
people into strongly opposed parties.

This partisan feeling was continued in the contest over paper
money, which rent the commonwealth, destroyed her economic
structure for a time, and ruined her reputation with her neigh¬
bors. In all of the colonies there had always been to some
extent a conflict between the landed and mercantile interests,
and in the preceding volume we have traced its appearance at
times of crisis. In the little colony of Rhode Island the con¬
trast between the small farmer and the rich merchant of New¬
port had been particularly marked. The farmer had suffered
much during the war and the British occupation, and the
merchant class had sustained a severe loss in the emigration
of many of its leaders, particularly the group of rich Hebrews
who had been largely responsible for the growth and importance
of Newport, and of whom few remained at the end of the war.
The resisting power of the mercantile element had thus de-

1 Bates, Rhode Island, p. 93.

GROWING UNREST

127

creased, whereas the demands of the ignorant “country party”
had become more radical owing to very real distress. On the
return of peace, creditors began to demand payment of debts.
In October 1781 paper money had been declared by the legis¬
lature to be no longer legal tender for taxes or debts to the state.1
The formation of associations against payment of taxes, with
occasional rioting, which now became the order of the day in the
other New England states, affected Rhode Island also. In
that state, however, owing to the fact that a majority of the
people were of the radical party, they were able to seize the
government and carry out their wishes by legal means, whereas
in the other states the discontented minorities were controlled
by armed force. The granting to Congress of the power to
levy the impost brought about the most violent phase of the
struggle. The towns voted petitions and instructions dealing
with their troubles, and the clamor for paper money became
insistent. It was said that the combination of an extreme
scarcity of cash and the lack of any market for real estate com¬
bined to raise the interest rates on farm mortgages to any¬
where from thirty to sixty per cent.2 In March 1786 the
demand for paper was defeated by forty-three to eighteen —
the same division as occurred on the vote against the impost at
the same session. The public demand grew, however, and
in the April election there was a complete overturn of the
legislature, half the upper House and forty-five Assemblymen
out of seventy being new men.3

At once an act was passed emitting £100,000 in paper, which
was to be loaned at four per cent in equal shares to all free¬
holders, on landed security of a value of twice the face of the
loan. The mercantile town of Providence protested vigorously
against the danger, but without avail. The new paper was
made legal tender, and if any creditor should refuse to accept
it, the debtor was permitted to deposit the amount of the debt
with a judge of his county and thus wipe out the debt. In
less than two months the new bills had depreciated so greatly
that a new act was passed, levying a fine of £100 on anyone

2 U. S. Chronicle , Oct. 26, 1786.

3 Bates, op. cit.} p. 123.

1 Bates, op. cit.> p. 116.

128

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

refusing to accept it or to sell any article at its coin value for
paper of the same face amount. Newport, Providence, and
Bristol all sought to avert the consequences, but the bill was
passed by a majority of six.

Merchants closed their stores rather than ruin themselves
by selling goods on these terms, farmers from the neighboring
states refused to bring in their produce, business came to a
halt, and the question of food supply became a serious one.
An attempt was made to introduce measures in the legislature
that would save the situation, but the country party merely
increased their wrath against the mercantile element. Dele¬
gates from sixteen towns met in a convention in August and
voted that they would withhold their farm produce from all
those who violated the paper-money act, and recommended to
the Assembly to redeem the state's debt in paper at a fixed
price.1 The Assembly then convened in special session and
passed a forcing act, making the paper legal tender for the
state's Continental obligations as well, — a repudiation of
good faith with regard to the Confederation, — and forcing
anyone who violated the money act to appear before a court of
three county judges, within three days of any complaint, for
trial. The right to a jury was abolished and the decision of
a majority of the three judges was to be final and without
appeal.2 Other laws in favor of debtors against creditors were
also passed.

Fortunately the judges of the Superior Court, although some
of them were paper-money advocates, were better defenders of
constitutional rights and simple honesty than were the legisla¬
tors of the popular party. In the case of Trevett vs. Weeden,
— an action brought against a poor butcher of the latter name
for refusing to receive paper money at a par with specie, —
the court decided that “the information was not cognizable
before them," the effect of this decision thus being that paper
could not be forced upon unwilling takers.3 The radical mem¬
bers of the legislature were furious, and efforts were made to
force the court to subservience to the legislative will, but with¬
out success. Moreover, in view of the conditions of trade and

1 Bates, op. cit., p. 128. 2 Ibid., p. 129. 3 Ibid., p. 134.

GROWING UNREST

129

sustenance, public opinion was slowly undergoing a change
and was less violently in favor of paper. The legislature,
however, took further action tending to ruin the good name
of the state by enacting the law that the state securities should
be liquidated in paper, thus repudiating a large part of the
state debt. Gradually the power of the paper-money party
declined, and at last the Legal Tender Act of 1786 was repealed
in 1789.

The resumption of specie payments throughout the nation —
eight years earlier, in 1781 — had occurred with such apparent
ease that there seems to have been an overestimate of the
amount of coin then in the country. It was generally assumed
that the payments made by France and England for the troops
here must have been very great, and that the money had re¬
mained on this side of the water. Sheffield was probably more
correct in figuring it at a much smaller amount than was cur¬
rently estimated. France, he thought, had sent in all only
about £600,000 sterling, while England had financed her opera¬
tions largely by bills and by only occasional remittances of
specie after the first years of the war.1 Trade with Havana
had brought in some more, but the total amount was certainly
not nearly so large as its sudden appearance in all the colonies
seemed to indicate. There was, however, considerably more
than before the war, so that the stoppage of the customary
pre-war supply of specie or bills on England due to the West
India trade was not felt at the very first, as it would have been
formerly. The resumption of specie payments, although thus
seemingly carried through so easily as to have affected many
historians as well as some contemporary observers, did work
considerable hardship at the time. Certainly the discussions
of the period regarding it show ill-feeling between classes and
a fear of the situation. “Nothing so scarce as money” was the
general cry, said the Massachusetts Spy of Worcester, quoting
from the Boston Gazette .2 “There is nothing a lawful tender
but hard money and that exceeding scarce,” complained the
Massachusetts Gazette of Springfield, and spoke of the difficulty

1 Observations on the Commerce of the American States , pp. 168 ff.

2 Mass. Spy, June 20, 1782. -

130

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

debtors were already facing.1 The Connecticut Courant during
1779, when resumption was under discussion, revealed in its
articles a marked bitterness between the debtors and creditors
of that state. In the two or three years following peace, specie
seems to have become scarcer in general circulation. A mem¬
ber of the Massachusetts legislature figured that probably
at one time during the war there had been from double to treble
the amount in the country which there had been in 1774, but
that this surplus had all been drained away in the adverse
trade balance and that what remained was being hoarded.
“Monied men will not part with their cash until necessity or
self-preservation draw it from them,” he noted, and added that
the farmers and laborers disliked to give up all their little supply
of hard money for taxes.2

Everywhere there was bitter complaint of the taxes, and they
unquestionably bore heavily on the poorer people. In 1774
Massachusetts had been out of debt, and the Province tax had
been less than fifteen cents per capita; but by 1786 her debt
had risen to £1,631,789, and in addition her share of the Con¬
tinental debtwas £1,565,831. It was impossible to collect taxes
sufficient to carry this load and liquidate any of the principal.
Of the £1,407,895 of direct taxes levied between 1780 and
1785 about £280,000 remained uncollected.3 In Connecticut
there was the same complaint. The people, it was said, were
at the end of their tether. Not only were the post-war taxes
unbearably heavy, but their incidence ruined the poor man.
The fact that lands were taxed regardless of the quality might
take from the owner of an inferior farm almost the value of the
property, some lands selling at that time for only five shillings
an acre.4 The poorer farmers were disposing of their farms
and emigrating to states where the taxes were lighter, and
mechanics were forsaking their trades and going to sea. In
New Hampshire the conditions were similar; there were the
same demands for paper money; a riot occurred at Exeter;

1 Issue of Sept. 3, 1782.

2 National Arithmetic , pp. 26, 82.

3 C. J. Bullock, Historical Sketch of the Finances and Financial Policy of Massachusetts ,
1780-1905, American Economic Association, Publications , Ser. Ill, vol. VIII, pp. 5, 8.

4 Stuart, Trumbull , p. 633.

GROWING UNREST

*3*

and at Keene the court was forced to suspend all cases when
overawed by a mob.1

It was in Massachusetts, however, that discontent assumed
its most dangerous form, finally threatening the existence of the
state. Much of it centred in the western counties, though by
no means wholly confined to them. The social unrest was
evidenced not only in organized movements but in an unusual
outbreak of crime in what was generally a law-abiding commu¬
nity. In a single issue of a newspaper we find notices of a horse
stolen, a house broken into and robbed, and three other rob¬
beries and holdups.2 A few months later the robberies had
become so numerous around Northampton that the citizens
of that town formed themselves into a society to run down the
perpetrators.3

In Hampshire County in 1782 and 1783 no less than seven
conventions were held to discuss the grievances of the day. Of
the first, that at Hadley in February 1782, we have no records,
but at a second, held at Hatfield in April, thirty-six towns were
represented. The action was fairly conservative, and on a
vote to request the inferior court to forbear giving judgment
in cases for debt except under certain conditions, the towns
voted twenty-one against and only fifteen in favor. 4 It was
requested that a committee be appointed by the legislature to
visit the county and consider grievances, and Major Hawley,
who was one of the conservatives attempting to guide matters,
was much in favor of this. Various men, such as Samuel Ely,
were trying to stir the people up to violent methods of coercion
of the creditor class, and it was felt that the situation was be¬
coming dangerous. In a letter to Caleb Strong, a member of
the legislature, Hawley said that, without some such measure
as a committee of investigation, “there is the utmost hazard
that the government will take such measures as may vastly
endanger the whole American cause. You would be astonished
to know with what amazing rapidity the spirit of the Insur-

1 W. Plumer, Jr., Life of William Plumer , (Boston, 1856), pp. 67 ff.

2 Mass. Gazette, (Springfield), Sept. 24, 1782.

3 Mass. Gazette, Dec. 10, 1782.

4 D. W. & R. F. Wells, History of Hatfield, (Springfield, 1910), p. 198.

132

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

gents propagates. Many are infected with it of whom you
would never have the least suspicion. We are not certain who
besides the Devil sprang Ely at first. But we are not at a loss
who ventilates the flame for the fire is now become such a flame
as I cannot describe to you. The General Court have not had
any affair of greater magnitude before them since the Revolu-

, ■ >y

tion.

Ely was a disqualified clergyman who had had a church at
Somers in Connecticut, and appears to have been a man of no
education or judgment. In April he and a mob threatened
the sitting of the court at Northampton but were dispersed,
and Ely gave himself into custody. When presented to the
jury for sedition, it was stated that he had said that “we must
throw up our constitution”; that “the constitution is broke
already, the Governor has too much salary, the Judges of the
Superior Court have too much salary ; we can get men that will
ride the circuit for half the money . . . that the General Court
should not sit; we will pay no more respect to them than to
puppies.” He also said that he had “been to all the towns on
the lower part of the county and that they were all for breaking
the Courts up,” and that he could raise two thousand men if
he could get somebody to lead them.1

On June 15 a mob of several hundred assembled for an attack
upon the jail at Northampton, where Ely had been confined.
The jail was broken and Ely was rescued, but three of the Mem¬
bers of the mob were captured. Another mob of about three
hundred then gathered to rescue these three and assembled at
Hatfield. General Elihu Porter, the sheriff of the county,
called out twelve hundred militia for the protection of the jail,
but after negotiating for several days he finally capitulated to
the mob and delivered up Ely to the rioters, on their word
of honor that he would be surrendered when required by the
General Court. That body soon afterward pardoned all the
insurgents with the exception of Ely, who fled from the state
and in September was reported to be in jail in Westminster,
Vermont.2

1 Mass. Gazette , (Springfield), May 14, 1782.

2 Ibid., Sept. 24, 1782.

GROWING UNREST

i33

In July the legislature passed an act making neat cattle and
certain other articles legal tender for the payment of debts,
and also suspended the collection of taxes pledged to pay in¬
stallments of the public debt. These and other measures,
however, did not go to the root of the matter, and did not pre¬
vent the spread of disaffection. Forcible resistance to tax¬
collecting became frequent. The deputy-sheriff at Pittsfield,
for instance, in September took a yoke of oxen from a farmer
on an execution for debt. The owner, Enoch Marvin, and
seven others rescued the cattle from the sheriff, who then
raised a posse of forty men. At Marvin’s house he found a
party of thirty to defend it under the lead of Thomas Lusk,
who was a substantial man in the community. These thirty
had covenanted together to resist all sheriffs and collectors in
levying taxes and collecting debts, but after a short battle they
fled.1

Petitions for redress of grievances began to come from Berk¬
shire County as well as Hampshire.2 Conventions and town
meetings continued to give voice to the troubles of the debt-
ridden farmers, and at Westfield the town voted, fifty to forty,
in January 1783, to pay no “Rates by Distress” until June.3
To the real grievances were added others in the minds of the
people that had little or no foundation, but that undoubtedly
had some influence in creating a feeling of distrust and resent¬
ment. These are summed up by a writer who signed himself
“Examiner” in the Massachusetts Gazette. Answering a series
of weak letters which had been appearing for the conservative
side, he said, after mentioning the oppressive weight of taxes,
that “ there are not a few who have already fled from them into
the state of Vermont, where the taxes are lighter. I know of
others who are preparing to follow them and I myself am afraid
that I shall be obliged to bear them company. . . . The
public demands are so great, that I see no way to discharge them
unless I make sale of my farm. I have a few small debts, but
government have incapacitated me for recovering them. . . .
However the complaint is not barely that taxes are heavy;

1 Ibid., Oct. 8, 1782.

2 Ibid., July 30, 1782.

3 J. H. Lockwood, Westfield and Its Historic Influence , (Springfield, 1922), p. 59.

J34

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

but that they are heavier than they need be : That due regard
has not been paid to economy : That multitudes have been
supported at the public expence who did no service : And that
the New England States, and especially this State, are taxed
beyond their proportion both in men and money : That we in
this Commonwealth pay a heavier tax than men of the same
estates do in any other of the United States, and double to
what they do in the State of New York: That the great,
extensive, populous and rich State of Virginia, though fully
officer’d, have not more than 150 rank and file with Gen.
Washington : That there are few save New England men
in our army : That raising so many men has cost us a
vast sum, and that most of our towns are still greatly in debt
on that account : That the taxes of the county of Hampshire
are higher than in any other county in the State, in proportion
to our numbers and estates : Further that our friends, brethren,
and children in the army are unpaid : That we know but little
about the expenditure of the money we have advanced, and
that the little we do know rather increases our uneasiness :
That we have no security that what we have paid will ever be
refunded : That the balance of power lies to the southward,
and that the northern States will be in danger of being oppressed
by the southern : That Philadelphia being the seat of Govern¬
ment, it may be expected the cash of the United States will
center there : and that there is not cash enough in this State
to pay the taxes lying upon us.” 1

In May 1783 there was an attack by an armed crowd on the
court then sitting at Springfield, but the rioters were repulsed.
A “Shorter Catechism”, that appeared in the Massachusetts
Gazette and many other papers in several of the states, con¬
tained some questions and answers that proved very popular
and indicate the feeling of the times. We give a few of these
as symptomatic of public opinion. Question, “ What is law ?”
Answer, “A servant to the rich and a taskmaster.” Question,
cc What are courts of justice ?” Answer, “Executioners of the
lav/.” Question, “What are lawyers?” Answer, “Rods of
corruption.” Question, “What is patriotism ?” Answer, “An

1 Mass. Gazette , (Springfield), Sept. 10, 1782.

GROWING UNREST

*35

hobby horse/’ Question, “What is independence ?” Answer,
“Dependence on nothing.” Question, “Do we enjoy it?”
Answer, “ Yes. ” Question, “Who gained it for us ? ” Answer,
“The army.” Question, “How shall we reward them ?” An¬
swer, “Cheat ’em.” Question, “What is public credit?”
Answer, “Soldiers notes at 30 per cent discount.”

The unsettled state of the public mind was reflected in many
conflicting currents of migration that set in after 1782. The
more settled portions of all the New England states poured
forth swarms of emigrants seeking to better their condition in
less crowded places. Some went into the wilderness of Maine.
The infertile tracts yet unoccupied in New Hampshire were
slowly taken up by those who had been forced thither by debt
and discouragement. Settlers poured into Vermont from all
the surrounding states. Although northern New England
filled rapidly, the greatest emigration of New England people
after 1781 was to states outside the section — to Pennsyl¬
vania, New York, and Ohio.1 The western lands were said
to be filling up “with amazing rapidity,” and were affording a
vent for many of the discontented elements who were suffering
severely from the effects of the war. Without this safety valve
there would undoubtedly have been explosions of resentment
far more powerful in the older settlements than actually
occurred. Rapid as was the draining away of the more ad¬
venturous and courageous of the poorer people, however, it
was not sufficient to avoid a crisis of the first magnitude in
Massachusetts.

1L. K. Mathews, The Expansion of New England , (Boston, 1909), p. 147.

CHAPTER VI

REBELLION

Distress among the Poor — Mob in New Hampshire — Views of
Ruling Class in Massachusetts — Debtors — Reform Demanded
and Refused — Holding of Conventions — Shays's Rebellion

It is evident from what has been said in the preceding chap¬
ters that the economic situation was seriously disturbed in the
years following the end of the war, and that dangerous condi¬
tions had arisen. The changes in business and agriculture
during the struggle ; the rapid rise of a new wealthy class ; the
simultaneous depression of many who had formerly been rich
or well-to-do ; maladjustment between the returns from vari¬
ous occupations ; the chaos of paper money ; the lack of specie,
that quickly succeeded its sudden appearance in 1781 ; the
load of debts, public and private ; the harsh laws relating to
debtors ; the burden of taxation and its unequal incidence ;
the spirit of a people who had just passed through an agonizing
struggle to win for themselves liberty of political action — all
made up a situation that was threatening in the extreme. The
Federal government was too weak and too remote to serve as
a bulwark against local disturbance, and the only forces that
could be relied upon to keep society together were the state
governments and the political sense of the people. The latter
had been developed to a remarkable extent in New England,
but there was, nevertheless, much ignorance among the poorer
elements and much of prejudice and selfishness not only among
them but among the rich, who pretended to a superior breadth
of mind.

It is impossible to determine to how great an extent the poor
had been led into debt and folly by the prevailing extravagance

REBELLION

*37

and heightened scale of living to which allusion has already
been made. As to the folly, the rich set the example and shared
in it equally with the poor, and it is unquestionable that it was
upon the latter that the burdens of the war had fallen heaviest.
By 1786 their extreme distress had become a fact that could
not be ignored, although it received scant sympathy from the
rich and the leaders of public opinion. The condition was
common to all the New England states. “A Cursory Perspec¬
tive” which made the rounds of the newspapers in 1786 de¬
scribed New Hampshire as “complaining of her late tender act
and her poverty”; Massachusetts as “possessed of little cash
and a stagnated trade”; Rhode Island “happy in her new
paper money”; Connecticut as “complaining of hard times
but do not yet express great uneasiness”; and Vermont as
“young: lost in the woods; crying, I can't get out.” 1

Vermont was indeed young and as yet unrecognized, but that
did not prevent her sharing in the general misery. One great
cause of dissatisfaction and injustice had, it is true, recently
been removed in that commonwealth, which has always cared
more for common sense and a rough justice than for precedents
and logic. In addition to the cloud on many land titles in that
state, owing to the conflict with New York, there had been an
immense amount of swindling of settlers by persons who sold
lands to which they had no title at all. The emigrants would
improve the land and build houses, only to find later that they
were liable to ejectment by the real owners, with no compensa¬
tion for their labor and improvements. One of the most active
of these land-swindlers was a fellow named Simeon Sears, and
so notorious were his operations that when certain citizens of
Bennington, who had been confined by the New York authori¬
ties in the City Hall at Albany, thirty miles away, were dis¬
cussing attacking and destroying that building, Ethan Allen
remarked that the better way would be just to get “Sim Sears

to sell the D - d thing.” 2 In 1785 a bill was passed by the

legislature to provide for such cases of fraud and eviction, that
gave the honest but gulled tenant, when dispossessed, the full

1 U. S. Chronicle , June 15, 1786.

2 D. Chipman, Life of Nathaniel Chipman , (Boston, 1846), p. 63.

i3 8 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

value of his improvements and half the increased value of the
land.1

This was a great step in advance and did away with much
injustice, but the economic evils of the neighboring states were
also felt in Vermont. In August 1786, Governor Chittenden,
in an address to the people, spoke at some length of the troubles
that beset them. During the war, he said, “we were obliged
to follow the example of Joshua of old, who commanded the
sun to stand still while he fought his battle; we commanded
our creditors to stand still while we fought our enemies,” and
this had distressed great numbers. Owing partly to this, and
partly to the growth of luxury and the lack of specie, the cost
of lawsuits, mainly for unquestioned debts, had in two years
nearly equaled the entire cost of the war in any two years of its
continuance. The popular remedies called for, which included
paper money, a legal-tender act, and the killing of all lawyers
and deputy sheriffs, were in his opinion but temporary pallia¬
tives. If he had to choose one of them, he would take paper
money, to be made tender only for such debts as should be
legally sued for, with the idea of preventing suits.2

On August 15 a meeting of about two hundred farmers, from
ten towns, was held at Rutland, and manifested a “spirited
resentment” against the harassing of so many good people by
the “banditti” known “by the name of Attorneys.” A notice
of the meeting ended with the warning : “Take notice how you
impose upon those who have passed thro’ the wilderness, and
endured fire, famine and the sword towards obtaining their own
rights, and the liberties of mankind.” 3 At the October session
of the legislature petitions were presented from nine towns,
setting forth grievances regarding taxation and lawsuits for
debt. Taxes, they said, were now laid mainly on the “mid¬
dling farmer and labouring poor man,” whereas they should be
“paid by owners of property in proportion to its true value.”4

Two acts were passed for the relief of debtors. In an effort
to stave off radical legislation, further action was delayed until

1 D. Chipman, Life of Nathaniel Chipman , pp. 63/.

2 Records of Governor and Council , vol. Ill, pp. 359 /.

3 Ibid., p. 362. 4 Ibid., pp. 362 /.

REBELLION

*39

the sense of the people could be taken in town meetings ; but,
impatient of the delay, mobs in both Windsor and Rutland
counties tried to prevent the courts from sitting. In February
of the following year the returns were made by the towns as to
the questions submitted to them, and it is noteworthy that
the project for paper money was defeated by nearly twenty-
two hundred votes against, as opposed to less than five hundred
in favor, although a general tender act was carried by a large
majority. At the next session of the legislature it was voted
without a dissentient voice that Jonathan Fassett, who had
been a leader in the threatened insurrection, should be deprived
of his seat in the Assembly. Acts were passed for the sup¬
pression of riots, for the fulfillment of contracts according to
intent, for the tender of certain articles in payment of debts,
for the reorganization of the courts, and for the remedy of other
grievances. Vermont was essentially a frontier state. The
general level of education was probably lower there than else¬
where in New England. With its manhood suffrage and single
legislative chamber, it was far the most democratic of all the
states. Nevertheless, it handled the delicate situation better
than did any of the others, and by forcibly suppressing the
rioting at the beginning and at the same time harkening to the
voice of the people and taking active measures for the redress
of grievances, it avoided the appeal to arms which was at the
same time racking the political structure of its most powerful
neighbor, Massachusetts.

Connecticut seems to have suffered somewhat less from the
economic ills of the period than the other states, though there
was much suffering and uneasiness. David Humphreys, on
his return from France, painted too bright a picture of his
native colony in a letter to Jefferson, but even he ended with
the statement that “many people appear to be uneasy and to
prognosticate revolutions they hardly know how or why.” 1
The course of events in the neighboring Bay State, to which we
shall soon turn, was being closely followed. “The dispersion
of the insurgents in Massachusetts is happy for us,” wrote “a

1 F. L. Humphreys, Life and Times of David Humphrey s, (New York, 1917), vol. I,
P- 354-

140

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

gent in New Haven” to the Massachusetts Gazette. “The sons
of fraud, rapine and licentiousness in several towns, and in
several counties in this State, were waiting with anxious expec¬
tations to see Shays and his banditti victorious ; had this event
taken place, a rebellion would in all probability have speedily
ensued ; but now scarcely a man mentions the word grievance.” 1

In Rhode Island we have already seen how armed conflict
was avoided by the issuing of the paper money demanded by
the people. They got what they wanted, although the effects
were not what they had anticipated. The mercantile and
conservative class had been so depleted by the Revolution
that they could not control legislation, and armed resistance
by them was out of the question. The situation, therefore,
worked itself out without bloodshed, though with much un¬
necessary suffering and injustice.

In New Hampshire there were the same scarcity of hard
money, the same demand for paper, and the same difficulties
over debts and lawsuits.2 Almost every town held meetings
to consider the distress of the people which was said to have
reached an “alarming” degree.3 A satirical treatment in the
press of the people’s demand for paper money called forth a
reply that is indicative of much of the feeling beneath the sur¬
face at this time. “The good people mark the men and their
measures in every town,” wrote “A Tradesman,” “and know
the secret springs or moving causes.” He complained of the
stockjobbing that was rampant and declared it to be “truly a
melancholy sight to see the people under such pressure of
fortune as to implicitly submit to an oligarchical government,
which puts it in the power of a few rich men to speak, write, and
even think for the multitudes, whom they esteem as asses of

1 Mass. Gazette , April 3, 1787.

2 A resolve of the town of Derryfield was typical of the views of the more ignorant
farmers. It was voted that “the Genral Court macke as much money in Bills of
Credit as pay the whole of thies States Securetes In three monthes from thies Dat and
Shall be a Lawfull tender in all Payments both Publicke and Privite also Death to
Countrfit Said money and Said Money not to Carye any Intrist and in Case any person
Shall Refuse or neglect to Bringe in ther State Securities by the first Day of Apreel
nixt and Recive ther money the Intrest to Case from that Dat.” Early Records of the
Town of Derryfield , now Manchester , (Manchester, 1906), vol. II, p. 121.

3 Mass. Gazette , Aug. 14, 1786.

REBELLION

I4I

burthen.” But “the people/’ he adds, “are not such fools as
their honours take them to be, which time will discover.” 1
A tender Act, passed in 1785, by which every sort of property
became legal tender at an appraised valuation, merely made
hard money scarcer than ever and did not relieve the situation.2

Committees from thirty towns petitioned the legislature in
August to issue irredeemable paper. A plan of issue was drawn
up and submitted to the towns, but in September a mob of
about two hundred men marched upon the legislature at Exeter
and threatened that body unless immediate action were taken.
For some hours they held the legislators prisoners, but the
governor ordered out the militia and the crowd was dispersed.
The people generally rallied to the side of government, and it
was deemed politic and safe to discharge the prisoners taken
by the troops.3 The courthouse at Plymouth was burned on
December 5, but that does not seem to have been part of any
organized movement, and the New Hampshire papers could
boast that the inhabitants were enjoying peace and tranquillity
while their neighbors in Massachusetts were fast approaching
“the horrors of civil war.” 4

In that latter state, from the beginning of settlement in the
seventeenth century, the ruling class had shown itself singularly
impervious to ideas. The few concessions which had been
won from them, looking toward freedom of thought or action
for any outside their own group, had been so only by prolonged
and sometimes bloody struggles. Of toleration in religion
they had no conception. In political thinking, the beliefs of
John Winthrop and John Cotton that democracy was “the
meanest and worst of all forms of government” and that “if
the people be governors who shall be governed?” had become
ingrained in the majority of the later leaders.5 The keynote
in the colony had always been rigid suppression, and it is pos¬
sible that this explains to some extent the fanaticism that has

1 New Hampshire Spy , Nov. 14, 1786.

2 “We are drained of our hard cash in the northern states for remittance to our
quondam connections with Great Britain.” N. H. Spy , Dec. 1, 1786.

3 Plumer, William Flumer , pp. 75 /.: Belknap, New Hampshire , vol. II, pp. 360 /.;
Mass. Gazette , Sept. 26, 1786.

4 N. H. Spyy Dec. 5, 1786.

5 Adams, Founding of New England , p. 143.

Iq2

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

characterized movements among its people and the constant
tendency of minority opinion to find expression in violent mob-
action. The petty aristocracy of clergy, lawyers, and mer¬
chants scorned the poor, had no belief in their political wisdom,
and at the same time was thrown into periodic panics on
account of fear of them.

It was all very well, when the common people were to be
goaded into action in the war, for the well-born,” in John
Adams’s oft-reiterated phrase, to talk about all men being
created equal, and of the rights of all to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness ; but once the war was won, the old doc¬
trines of the peculiar rights of the “well-born” to govern and
the peculiar sanctity of their property came once more to the
fore. At the time of the adoption of the Constitution of 1780,
as we have seen, much was made of the distinction between
property and persons, and the necessity of giving both rep¬
resentation. But although property became fully represented,
that right was denied to a large part of the population which
had hitherto possessed it, even under the limited franchise
of the old charter. The property qualifications for that fran¬
chise had been doubled in Massachusetts at the very time when
New Hampshire was giving the vote to every male over twenty-
one who paid a poll tax and when Vermont had abolished all
restrictions on the voting by males of legal age.

The attitude toward the poorer elements in the Massachu¬
setts population is well shown by that part of the address of
the Constitutional Convention defending the franchise clause.
All those not possessing the required property qualification, it
ran, “are either those who live upon a Paternal estate, expect¬
ing the Fee thereof, who are just entering into business, or
those whose Idleness of Life and profligacy of manners will
forever bar them from acquiring and possessing Property . . .
men who will pay less regard to the Rights of Property because
they have nothing to lose.” 1 The people had been under the
delusion that they had fought an eight-years war for the rights
of man, and at the time of the formation of the Constitution,
as we saw in an earlier chapter, many towns objected strenu-

1 Quoted by Morison, Mass. Hist. Soc., Coll., vol. L, p. 390.

REBELLION

*43

ously to this further limitation of the franchise. Dorchester
claimed that men might be “usefull and respectable members
of Society” even if they did not possess sixty pounds. It was
argued — oh, shades of 1776 ! — that taxation and representa¬
tion went together, and that if the Senate represented property
there was no reason why the lower House should not represent
persons. This, however, now that the war was over, was con¬
sidered dangerous radical doctrine. Property must be pro¬
tected, whatever happened to “persons.” It was protected
so well that by 1786, the year of the rebellion, forty per cent
of the state taxes were levied solely on polls.

In the preceding year no taxes at all had been laid, owing to
unsettled conditions and the supineness of the legislature ; but
as a result of a vigorous message from the new governor, Bow-
doin, in 1786 a tax of £311,000 was voted, of which £145,000
was for the state’s quota of the Federal needs and £100,000
for the partial payment of the notes which had been given to
the soldiers for pay.1 In October Rufus King wrote to John
Adams that the taxes for that year “for the purposes of the
union, the state, and the counties & towns, including the sup¬
port of the clergy & the town schools” would not be less than a
million and a half dollars, about four fifths of which would have
to be directly levied upon polls and estates, and would equal
about one third of the total income of the citizens. He con¬
sidered it “beyond what prudence would authorize.” 2 The
population of Massachusetts, including Maine, was then ap¬
proximately four hundred thousand, so that, on a per capita
basis, the taxes would have averaged about twenty dollars to
every household of five. “But to have the Collectors call for
twenty dollars taxes at a time is more money than we ever see at
once,” complained “A Farmer” in a letter to the Massachusetts
Centinel , advocating indirect taxes that could be more easily
borne.3

1 Bullock, Finances of Massachusetts , p. 9.

2 King, Rufus King, vol. I, p. 190.

3 Quoted by Joseph P. Warren, Appendix II, in “The Shays’ Rebellion,” a manu¬
script thesis in Harvard University Library. This thesis has been of great value to
me in the preparation of this chapter. In quoting from the sources, however, my own
references are usually to the newspapers of the day, as being more readily accessible,
whereas Dr. Warren’s are from manuscripts in the Mass. Archives for the same material.

*44

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

The excessive taxes, combined with the mass of personal
debt, the amount of which cannot be ascertained, were too
great to be borne. Farms could not even be sold to clear their
owners.1 In Concord, for several years, suits for debt had
averaged about fifty annually, or one to every five families
in the town.2 In Groton, from 1784 to 1786, every fourth if
not every third man in the town was subjected to from one to
twelve suits for debt.3 In Worcester County in 1784-85 there
were four thousand lawsuits in a population of fifty thousand,
or one to nearly every head of a family.

The abuse that was heaped on the lawyers was probably not
deserved, though historians have not hesitated to repeat it.
That the members of the bar in Massachusetts were at least
men of education is shown by the fact that, of the seventy
admitted to practice from 1776 to 1786 inclusive, fifty-seven
were graduates of Harvard, one of Princeton, one of Brown,
and three of Yale.4 They were merely instruments employed
by the creditors to execute the laws passed by the legislature,
but these laws were unjust and inhumane. When judgment
was entered against a debtor, there was no property, save the
clothes on his back, that could not be seized. Not only his
farm but his live stock, his bed, and even the last bit of food
in the house could be sold by the sheriff for a fraction of their
actual value. If the proceeds of these at forced sale were not
sufficient to satisfy the judgment, the unfortunate debtor could
be thrown into prison and thus be deprived of all opportunity
of working off the debt. In Concord in 1786 the jail records
show that three times as many prisoners were confined for debt
as for all other causes combined, and in Worcester County
twenty times as many.5 6

1 “If we would sell our farms to pay our debts, the distresses are so great in other
states there are no purchasers.” Address of Governor Chittenden, Vermont, 1786.
Records of Governor and Council , vol. Ill, p. 360.

2 Reverend Grindall Reynolds, A Collection of Historical and Other Papers , (Con¬
cord, 1895), P- 97-

3 S. A. Green, “Groton during Shays’s Rebellion,” Mass. Hist. Soc., Proceedings ,
1884, p. 298.

4 Jonathan Smith, “Features of Shays’ Rebellion,” Clinton Hist. Soc., Papers , vol.

b P- 13.

6 Reynolds, Historical Papers , p. 199; Smith, op. cit ., p. 12.

REBELLION

*45

In May there was an election for members of the General
Court, and the widespread dissatisfaction of the people was
shown by a fairly complete overturn of the members, although
the poorest part of the population was disfranchised and could
not thus give expression to their grievances. Few lawyers were
returned to the new legislature. The suggestion to issue paper
money was voted down, very wisely, but practically nothing
was done to relieve the distress. From that time on, the dis¬
contented classes took matters into their own hands. In June
a town meeting was held at Groton to choose a “Committee
of Correspondence,” quite in accord with Revolutionary prece¬
dent. This committee was to communicate with other towns
and endeavor to secure the removal of the legislature from
Boston ; to have it limit the number of attorneys to one for
each county; to stop all lawsuits until money should be more
plentiful ; to issue sufficient paper money to pay all foreign
and domestic debts ; to provide that temporarily no distress
be made for debts or taxes ; to pay interest to the holders of
the public securities not on their par value but only on the
price the holder had paid; and to “see that there is no more
Infringements made on our Injured Rights and previledges.” 1
In the same month began the series of county conventions
which were the notable feature of the peaceable side of the
rebellion. Bristol County held one at Taunton on July 27, at
which a petition for paper money and relief for debtors was
prepared for the legislature. The following day a paper was
circulated throughout the county, stating that the suits for
debt threatened “to involve great part of the people in beggary
and misery,” and as the legislature was doing nothing for their
relief, that the signers would engage to oppose by force all
courts that might sit in that county for suits against debtors,
until a redress of grievances could be legally secured.2

On the seventeenth of August a convention of delegates of
thirty-seven towns in Worcester County met at Leicester —
Willis Hall, a deacon of the church at Sutton, being chosen
moderator. Among the grievances named were the sitting of
the legislature at Boston ; the abuses of the law and exorbitant
1 Green, op. cit., p. 300. 2 Text in Mass. Gazette , Aug. 14, 1786.

1 46 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

fees ; the administration of the Courts of Common Pleas ; too
many officials at high salaries ; excessive grants to individuals ;
paying money to the Federal government while the accounts of
amounts due the state from Congress were still unsettled;
and the payment of interest on the state debt. It was also
voted to correspond with other county conventions, to oppose
all mobs and riots, and to try to obtain redress by constitutional
means only.1

The failure of the reform legislature to do anything to redress
the very real grievances of the people could not fail to create
trouble. There was nothing illegal about meeting together in
peaceable conventions and petitioning the legislature. The
conservatives, however, refused to recognize the real situation
and gave vent to much stupid and dangerous nonsense in the
press. “Instead of chearfully paying, as far as they are able,
their own private debts, retrenching their idle, unnecessary
expenses, and contributing their portion to support a govern¬
ment of their own making,” wrote “A Citizen,” “we see them
assembling in conventions to do acts treasonable to the state.”
Their leaders, he said, are “destitute of property, without
reputation, hardy and factious in their tempers, and eminent
only for their vices and depravity,” or maybe are only “vile
emissaries of haughty Britain.” The conventions, he added,
amount to “a reassumption of the power to govern into the
hands of the people.” 2

A few days later “An other Citizen” continued in the same
strain. He scoffed at the possibility that such men as attended
the conventions should know anything of governmental affairs
or finances. “Though all power originates from the people,”
he said, “it does not remain with them.” “We have a govern¬
ment of our own establishment, equal to all the powers for
which government is established ; and laws of our own making ;
we annually choose the officers of that government; they are
answerable to us ; and they are bound to alter the laws or to
make new ones, according to the exigences of the people.” 3

1 Text in Mass. Gazette , Aug. 25, 1786. Several towns in the county refused to send
representatives, among them Worcester and Bolton. Ibid., Aug. 22 and 29.

2 Mass. Gazette , Aug. 22, 1786. 3 Ibid., Aug. 25, 1786.

REBELLION

147

It is evident that if such talk as this represented the attitude
of the conservative leaders, a clash could hardly be avoided.
Necessary as it undoubtedly was to adopt the Constitution of
1780, it cannot be said that it was wholly the people’s choice.
As we have seen, it was adopted only by juggling the returns,
and from one third to one half of the people of the state had
been opposed to it, or at least to a considerable part of it. This
was a minority formidable enough in the establishment of a
new government to call for considerate treatment. Moreover,
a large portion of the people who were suffering from the griev¬
ances complained of did not have a voice in the choosing of
officers and making of laws, as asserted. Although the trouble
started in eastern Massachusetts, the rebellion assumed its
most serious form in those counties that had been most stren¬
uous in opposition to increasing the property qualification for
the franchise.

Fisher Ames, who well represented the reactionary element
in the state following the Revolution, said that a more popular
form of government “could not be contrived nor could it
stand.” 1 This, of course, was false. The old charter had
been more popular in the franchise, and of the more democratic
states, which surrounded the reactionary Massachusetts on
every side, at least two passed through the post-war crisis with
less disturbance than did the Bay State with its distrust of the
people and its “strong” constitution. The attitude of the
conservative element and their utter lack of sympathy with or
understanding of those who were smarting under wrongs is
shown not only by such anonymous letters to the press as
quoted above, but by the writings of such men as Ames. When
the long-brewing trouble finally broke into open opposition to
the government, he could talk only of “the desperate ambition
of the worst men in the commonwealth” ; fC the convenience of
bankrupts and sots, who have gambled or slept away their
estates”; “the sophisms of wrong-headed men of some under¬
standing”; and “the multitude of tavern-haunting politi-
cians. z

Faced by genuine grievances, denied to a great extent the

1 Works of Fisher Ames, (Boston, 1809), p. 3. 2 Ibid., p. 3.

148 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

right to express themselves at the polls, with a legislature that
showed itself unable or unwilling to devise remedial measures,
and with the leaders of the state utterly unsympathetic, what
was left for the discontented but violent action ? Even Alex¬
ander Hamilton, who certainly cannot be accused of popular
leanings or of countenancing uprisings, wrote the following
year, in defense of the new Federal Constitution, that “if the
representatives of the People betray their constituents, there
is then no resource left but in the exertion of that original right
of self-defence which is paramount to all positive forms of
Government,” and that in single states where the subdivisions
had no distinct governments to oppose the legal authority “the
citizens must rush tumultuously to arms, without concert,
without system, without resource; except in their courage and
despair.” 1 If a man like Hamilton could voice such senti¬
ments, is it any wonder that the farmers and artisans of remote
rural districts and small towns, faced by a recalcitrant legisla¬
ture and an obstinate group of reactionary leaders, and with¬
out organized political parties to espouse their cause, could
find no recourse save in armed action ?

Until comparatively recently, most historians have followed
to a great extent the contemporary utterances of the reaction¬
aries in vilifying the characters and motives of the malcontents,
but a sounder judgment and a more sympathetic attitude are
now coming to prevail. There is something peculiarly irritat¬
ing in the self-complacent outpourings of such a man as Fisher
Ames. He was eighteen in 1776, and twenty-five when peace
was declared. Yet during the entire Revolutionary struggle
he stayed comfortably at home, studying law and reading
poetry. His laudatory biographer tells us that he “watched its
progress with pa trio tick concern . . . though too young to
take an active part.” 2 The men whom this conservative
young statesman designated in 1786 as sots and bankrupts and
the worst men in the commonwealth, had not been too young
from eighteen to twenty-five to take an active part in the
defense of their country. If they were less versed in poetry

1 The Federalist , (cd. New York, 1897), pp. 184/.

2 Ames, Works , pp. vi, x.

REBELLION

H9

and the classics than the young Boston lawyer, they had served
through the grueling years of Valley Forge and Saratoga and
Stony Point.

The mass of those who broke into rebellion were, indeed,
yeomen farmers, mechanics, and laborers, and so of no account
in the eyes of the merchants and professional classes of aristo¬
cratic Massachusetts society. They were many of them with¬
out votes under the “most popular form of government” that
— in the opinion of those same classes — could “be con¬
trived,” and so without interest, perhaps, for the legislators.
But they were far from being a mere rabble, and they were led
by men who had been officers in the late war. The nominal
leader, Daniel Shays, although not a man of ability, was by no
means the craven coward and mere agitator that his opponents
painted at the time. He had responded to the alarm at Lexing¬
ton, when he had served for eleven days. Lie was in the battle
of Bunker Hill and was promoted then for brave and gallant
conduct. He was in the expedition against Ticonderoga in
1776, and during his career in the army fought at Saratoga and
Stony Point, raised a company, and was made a captain. This
is a war record that certainly bears comparison with that of the
supercilious young Ames, reading poetry in Boston and watch¬
ing the progress of the struggle “with patriotick concern.”
Shays was poor, and was much criticized for his lack of fine
feeling in having sold a sword that had been presented to him
by Lafayette. He was, however, elected to local offices such
as town warden, for some years after the war.1 A number of
men who served with him in the contest have left their opinions
on record. Henry Hallowed, in his diary, speaks of having
served in Shays’s regiment, and says that he was “respected as a
very good officer, and was very good to his men.”2 Captain
Park Holland, who had also been under Shays in the Revolu¬
tion and who served under General Lincoln in the rebellion,
wrote of his former superior that he was “a brave and good
soldier, or officer, and I can truly say that it was with no regret
on my part that I had not reached here in season to see him

1 Smith, op. cit., p. 17.

2H. K. Sanderson, Lynn in the Revolution, (Boston, 1909), pp. 177, 180.

150

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

and his mistaken followers fired upon as enemies.” Of the
malcontents generally he added that “we who stood by the
side of these men, in many hard-fought battles with a powerful
enemy and witnessed their hardships and sufferings borne
without a complaint would much rather remember the good
service they rendered their country” than dwell upon their
later mistake in trying to right their wrongs by force.1

Of the other men who were prominent enough in the move¬
ment to be indicted for treason in 1787, fifteen out of twenty-
one were described in the indictments as “gentlemen” and only
six as “yeomen.” All of Shays’s captains, so far as is known,
had been soldiers in the Revolution. Captain Wheeler, for
example, had served in both the French and Indian and later
wars, had been a captain in the Revolution, was a deacon in
the church, and a man of high standing in his community.
Out of forty names taken at random from indictments in the
rebellion twenty-eight are known to have been Revolutionary
soldiers, and the rest cannot be traced, as their addresses are
not given.2 The numbers engaged, also, show that the move¬
ment could not have been confined to a mere rabble. General
Knox, the Secretary of War, writing to Washington, stated that
the numbers of insurgents amounted to “one-fifth part of sev¬
eral populous counties,” 3 and the numbers of those in sympathy
with the movement in the western part of the state has been
placed at a much higher ratio.

Immediately after the meeting of the convention at Leicester,
Governor Bowdoin issued a proclamation to revive the spirit
of the militia, which had grown very slack, and earnestly
recommended that every town immediately take steps to see
that they were furnished with the full complement of powder
and ammunition required by law.4 On the twenty-second of
August a convention of fifty towns of Hampshire County met
at Hatfield, with Colonel Benjamin Bonny in the chair.
Among the grievances complained of were the existence of the

1 “Park Holland’s Narrative,” given as Appendix I in Warren’s Mss. thesis, op. cit.

2 Smith, op. cit., p. 16.

3F. S. Drake, Life and Correspondence of Henry Knox , (Boston, 1873), P* 92*

4 Mass. Gazette , Aug. 22, 1786.

REBELLION

151

state senate ; the method of representation ; the Court of
Common Pleas, lawyers, and high fees ; the sitting of the legis¬
lature at Boston ; the mode of taxation and of paying the state
debt; the unequal incidence of taxation ; and the lack of a cir¬
culating medium. It was voted that the representatives of all
the towns in the county be instructed to vote for an issue of
paper money, to be legal tender and to be exchanged for the
state debt. It was further resolved that the constitution
should be revised, that the legislature should meet at once to
consider grievances, and that the people should abstain from
all mobbing and unlawful assemblies.1 As the “ conventions”
were continuing bodies, it was also agreed that copies of the
resolutions should be sent to those of Worcester and Berkshire
Counties. The following day a convention of delegates from
a majority of the towns of Essex County met at Concord and
voiced a number of the same grievances as had the other con¬
ventions. In addition, complaint was made of “taking men’s
bodies for debt, and confining them in jail, when they possess
property sufficient to answer the demands of their creditors”;
of the accounts of the United States with Massachusetts
remaining unsettled; and of the method of choosing jurors.2
Loyalty to the constitution was proclaimed, and mobbing dis¬
countenanced.

The meeting of these various conventions, representing
several hundred towns, was evidence that the demand of the
people was widespread and that the failure of the legislature to
act on grievances was bringing a new force of public opinion
into action. Although at all the gatherings the use of lawful
means only had been recommended, an outbreak could no
longer be staved off, and it occurred on the twenty-ninth of
August at Northampton. A mob said to number about fifteen
hundred, of whom five hundred were armed, headed by a
captain of militia, seized the courthouse when the court was
about to sit, and prevented it from conducting its business.
The reports agree that the crowd exhibited much sobriety and

1 Mass. Gazette , Sept. 8, 1786; G. R. Minot, History of the Insurrections in Massa¬
chusetts , (Boston, 1810), pp. 33/.

2 Mass. Gazette , Sept. 5, 1786.

152

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

good order and that there was no violence.1 The governor at
once issued a proclamation calling upon all civil and military
officers to suppress such outbreaks, and stating that he had
instructed the Attorney-General to prosecute and bring to
punishment the ringleaders and abettors of this and any similar
violations of law.2

A meeting was held a few days after at Portland, Maine, to
consider the holding of a county convention, but the conserva¬
tive element retained control and the plan was negatived. It
was said, however, that it made no difference whether the Gen¬
eral Court considered the conventions illegal or not; the
Parliament of Great Britain had considered the General Court
illegal, but that had not prevented the people from supporting
it, and it mattered not to them now whether they were injured
by the government of Britain or that of Massachusetts.3 A
convention of the towns of the three counties of York, Cumber¬
land, and Lincoln was held at Portland September 6, and
expressed the opinion that no redress of grievances could be
had until Maine was made an independent state, separate from
Massachusetts. There would be no difficulty then, it was
naively said, because “government is a very simple, easy
thing.” 4

The attack on the court at Northampton led to fears for the
one to be held at Worcester on September 5. The governor
called on the sheriff of that county to prevent a repetition of the
Northampton episode, and also instructed Major-General
Warner, who commanded the county militia, to give aid.
Many of the militia, however, flatly refused to turn out, and
those who did showed little desire to oppose the insurgents.
The latter numbered about two hundred at first, and during
the several days in which they were parleying with the court,
were reenforced to double that number. The court was finally
compelled to adjourn until the third Tuesday in November,
and the insurgents were successful.5

1 Mass. Gazette , Sept. 5, 1786. 3 Ibid., Sept. 8, 1786.

2 Ibid. 4 Ibid., Sept. 22, 1786.

6 Warren, op. cit ., fols. 39, 43. The folio references are to a typewritten copy which

I was permitted to have made.

REBELLION

x53

At Great Barrington, on the twelfth, although the militia
had also been ordered out there, the mob was ahead of them
and held the courthouse all the night before the sitting. These
fifteen hundred “stubborn Jonathans,” as they were described,
overawed the militia and court, prevented the latter from
sitting, and released all the debtors held in jail.1 They also
drew up a paper declaring that no more courts should sit until
the constitution had been revised, and they actually got three
of the four judges to sign the document.

Disaffection was by no means confined to the western coun¬
ties, and trouble was expected at the meeting of the courts at
both Concord and Taunton. It was decided by the governor
and his advisers to send militia to protect the Middlesex Court
at Concord, but on the tenth two of the judges advised the
government that the people were much excited and that lenient
measures would better secure the end. At the same time a
petition from twenty-four towns in that county expressed
loyalty to the government, coupled with fears of the possible
results of stern measures.2 The governor, therefore, — un¬
wisely, as it proved, — countermanded his orders to the militia.
The court was to meet on the twelfth but before that date a
meeting was held in Faneuil Hall in Boston at which Samuel
Adams was presiding officer. The meeting declined to con¬
sider “whether the grievances, mentioned by the conventions
in some of the counties of the state, really exist or not,” —
which was certainly the fundamental point, — and confined
itself only to the question of armed insurrection. Adams, who
had been the leading agitator and revolutionist in the colony
a decade and more previously, when the revolutionary party
was in a decided minority, now gave his voice for the absolute
right of a majority to rule, and the forced submission of a
minority, however large.3

1 Mass. Gazette , Sept. 29, 178 6.

2 Warren, op. cit ., fol. 48. The letter from the town of Concord, offering to act in
concert with the neighboring towns for the purpose of mediating between opposing
parties should they meet, was published in the Mass. Gazette , Sept. 12, 1786.

3 1 see no reason to doubt his biographer’s belief that the “Address” published by the
meeting was written by him. W. V. Wells, Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams ,
(Boston, 1865), vol. Ill, p. 225.

x54

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

The picture of the arch-conspirator and manipulator of the
Boston mobs now deprecating “tumultuous methods” and the
rights of minorities has a certain sardonic humor. Evidently
he himself felt the need of explanation, and the address con¬
trasts at length the justification for revolution in 1776 and the
presumed absence of it in 1786. The legislature, he said, —
ignoring the fact that a large part of the people was disfran¬
chised under the new constitution, — is elected by the people,
and so controlled by them. The minority may not always
get what they want but, naively asked the ex-revolutionist, “is
not this always the case when in society the compact is for the
minority to submit to the majority ? Let the majority be ever
so much in the wrong, is there any remedy, within the reach of
nature, compatible with the ideas of society and government ?
To say, the majority shall not govern, is saying either that we
will reduce ourselves to a state of nature, or reject the ideas of
civil liberty.” Of course the malcontents might claim, as they
did in Maine, that it made no difference whether evils were
suffered from the government of Britain or from that of Massa¬
chusetts, but Adams was no longer on the opposition bench.
Refusing even to consider the grievances of the people, — which
the town of Concord voted on the same day were not ground¬
less, — he declared that the trouble came solely from British
emissaries and from “wicked and unprincipled men” who
sought only their own emolument.1

Meanwhile, the court at Concord had been left unprotected.
About seventy armed men, under the lead of Job Shattuck of
Groton and two others, appeared and were unmoved by the
attempted moral suasion of the Concord mediating committee.
This mob appears to have been a rather disreputable lot, but
they were soon joined by about ninety men of better calibre
from Worcester, and, increased to about three hundred in all,
they forced the justices to agree that the court should not be
opened.2 The government was thus set at defiance within the
near neighborhood of Boston. In Bristol County it was left
to the discretion of the sheriff and the justices whether the
militia should be used or not, although the Governor and
'Mass. Gazette , Sept. 12, 1786. 2 Ibid., Sept. 15, 1786.

REBELLION

i55

Council rather advised against it. General Cobb did use the
soldiers to protect the court. Nevertheless, the insurgents
were in such large numbers that, in spite of the presence of two
troops of militia, the justices adjourned until December without
doing any business. There was also trouble in Essex County,
though the court sat, somewhat timidly, at Newbury.

So far, the efforts of the insurgents had been directed to pre¬
vent the hearing of cases for debt by forcing the courts to close.
Fearing, however, as a result of their acts, indictments against
themselves in the Supreme Court, the leaders now decided that
they must close the court for their own safety. This court was
to meet at Springfield on September 29, and Major-General
William Shepherd, of the Hampshire militia, prepared to defend
it. On the day of the sitting about seven hundred to a thou¬
sand insurgents were faced by eight hundred militia. The
former passed resolutions that the court be allowed to deal with
all criminal cases except the indictment of insurgents by the
grand jury, that judgments in civil cases be suspended until a
redress of grievances could be had, and that the militia be dis¬
banded at once. Captain Shays, as chairman of the committee
that presented these resolutions to the court, now made his
first appearance as a leader. It was agreed that both militia
and insurgents should disband, and the court then adjourned.1
It was to meet next at Great Barrington on October 3, but did
not dare go there. Bands of several hundred insurgents col¬
lected, and perpetrated a number of abuses against private
citizens — a phase that was rare until the very last stage of the
rebellion. On October 4 the town of Stockbridge passed reso¬
lutions denouncing the attempts to close the courts and prom¬
ising support to the government.2

Meanwhile the legislature was in special session at Boston,
and the Governor called for energetic measures. For three
weeks the members talked and passed vague resolutions, but
the two houses could not agree and did nothing either to uphold
the government by strong measures or to redress the grievances
of the disaffected. At the end of October the court at Taunton
had again to be protected by troops who, this time, faced only
1 Mass. Gazette , Oct. 3, 1786. 2 Ibid., Oct. 10, 1786.

1 56 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

a weak body of insurgents. On the twenty-first the legislature
advised the Governor that they would take steps to protect the
Supreme Court scheduled to meet at Cambridge, and four days
later passed a riot act. This strengthened the Governor’s
hands, and, protected by over two thousand troops, the court
held its session undisturbed.

Finally the legislature provided that the payment of back
taxes might be made in specified articles instead of money,
passed a tender act for a limited time, and offered a plan for
lessening the business that had to be brought before the Court
of Common Pleas. Import and excise taxes were laid in order
to reduce direct taxation, and an indemnity act was passed
giving full pardon to anyone who had been in insurrection since
June i, provided he would take the oath of allegiance before
January I. A long debate on suspending the Writ of Habeas
Corpus, however, had ended in its suspension November io
and this further irritated the insurgents. The Governor and
Council were also given the power, up to July i, 1787, of im¬
prisoning without bail any person they considered dangerous to
the state. The Courts of Common Pleas and General Sessions,
with the exception of that to meet at Worcester in November,
were temporarily suspended. Having voted an address to the
people the legislature then adjourned.1

The real troubles, however, had been left practically un¬
touched. Nothing of importance had been done as to the
scarcity of money, the seizure of person as well as property for
debt, and the grievances as to the courts. The dislike of the
Court of Common Pleas seems to have had a sound foundation.
An article in the Boston Magazine , several years before, had
asked, “What real service are the Courts of Common Pleas in
deciding causes in the method they are usually conducted ?
Not one cause in ten that is disputed is finally issued there, nor
one in five perhaps has a trial there of any kind. . . . The
time and expense usually attending a suit in Common Pleas is
only preparatory to a trial ; and very frequently the prepara¬
tion is incomplete in the first instance.” The defendant did
not make his real answer until the case had been taken to the
1 The address is in Mass. Gazette , Nov. 28 and Dec. 1, 1786.

REBELLION

J57

Supreme Court, and the time and money were all wasted.1
The Worcester County convention in October, in a petition to
the legislature, said truly that these courts were “an amazing
expense” to the people, with no conceivable good whatever;
that not one case in forty before the judges was really designed
for trial; and that no dependence could be placed upon the
decisions.2 Yet the legislature made no resolute attack upon
this problem, and the Senate insisted that the courts should be
retained. In a word, the legislature had neither undertaken to
suppress the rebellion by force nor had it redressed grievances in
such a way as to bring about a peaceable and voluntary settlement.

Washington, at Mount Vernon, was keenly interested in the
situation, and his comments on the Massachusetts government
are terse and illuminating. “For God’s sake, tell me,” he
wrote to David Humphreys in October, “what is the cause of
these commotions ? Do they proceed from licentiousness,
British influence disseminated by the Tories, or real grievances
which admit of redress ? If the latter, why were they delayed
until the public mind had become so agitated ? If the former,
why are not the powers of government tried at once?”3 A
few days later, writing to Henry Lee, he said : “You talk, my
good sir, of employing influence to appease the present tumult
in Massachusetts. . . . Influence is no government. Let us
have one by which our lives, liberties and properties will be
secured, or let us know the worst at once. . . . Know precisely
what the insurgents aim at. If they have real grievances,
redress them if possible ; or acknowledge the justice of them,
and your inability to do it at the present moment. If they
have not, employ the force of government against them at
once.” 4 When judged by the standard of this vigorous sanity,
it is no wonder that the blind obstinacy of the Massachusetts
conservatives, the refusal of such men as Sam Adams even to
consider the grievances, and the shilly-shallying of the legisla¬
ture moved Washington to yet stronger comment.

1 The article was reprinted in the Mass. Gazette , Oct. 6, 1786.

2 Ibid., Oct. 17, 1786.

3 Quoted by J. C. Fitzpatrick, “Some Sayings of Washington which Apply To-day,”
Daughters of the American Revolution Magazine , vol. LV, p. 61.

4 Ibid., p. 62.

158 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

On November 28 court was held at Cambridge under pro¬
tection of the militia, and in spite of rumors of attack, no rebels
appeared. This emboldened the government, and warrants
were issued for the arrest of Job Shattuck and four other insur¬
gent leaders of Groton and Shirley. Two escaped, but Shat¬
tuck, Page, and Parker were captured, the first after a severe
fight in which he was badly wounded.1 They were placed in
Boston jail, and in Middlesex County this practically ended the
rebellion, which was also over by the first of December in the
other eastern counties, in spite of anxiety and minor disturb¬
ances.

Trouble, however, was expected in Worcester County when
the court should meet there on December 5. The Governor
sent the usual orders to the sheriff and General Warner of the
militia to protect the court, but later lost heart and directed
Warner to desist from action unless the militia had already
turned out in sufficient numbers to ensure success. The court
was instructed to adjourn if there was any opposition, and, as a
thousand insurgents appeared, it promptly did so. The insur¬
gents disbanded in a few days, after having sent a petition to
the legislature for pardon, reciting the usual grievances, includ¬
ing the recent suspension of the writ of habeas corpus.2 The
court at Springfield was next attacked on the twenty-sixth and
forced to suspend.3 It may be noted that just at this same
time, in the democratic state of Vermont, with manhood suf¬
frage, the courts were being kept open and any who interfered
with them were being promptly landed in jail by the militia
and sheriffs.4

With the beginning of the new year the situation changed.
The disaffected gave up hope that the legislature would hon¬
estly redress their grievances. The town of Rehoboth in Bristol
County adopted a novel expedient by stopping the pay of its
representative, it being the sense of a town meeting that there
was no reason for being at the expense of keeping him at Boston

1 Warren, op. cit ., fols. 76 /.

2 Mass. Gazette , Dec. 8, 15, 1786.

8 Bowdoin and Temple Papers, Mass. Hist. Soc., Co//., Ser. VII, vol. VI, pp. 121-4.

4 Conn. Couranti Dec. 25, 1786.

REBELLION

159

another eight weeks “to make laws which in our judgment are
not consistent with republican principles,” and “because this
town do not entertain the most distant idea that the present
administration will relieve our distresses.” 1 On the other
hand, the government seems by this time to have resolved to
suppress the revolt by force.

About the first of January, General Benjamin Lincoln was
appointed to lead an expedition to crush the insurgents. It
was an excellent choice. Lincoln had a good record in the
Revolutionary War, was energetic, and had sound judgment in
political as well as military matters. The Governor and
Council also planned to raise a force of forty-four hundred men,
with four companies of artillery. There were, however, no
public funds with which to meet the expense and the state
treasurer was unable to negotiate a loan. At this point we
must turn to consider the question that had been secretly
agitated for some months of the use of Federal troops in the
emergency.

Congress had two interests in the insurrection — the possible
overthrow of the state government with its effects on other
states, and the protection of the Federal arsenal at Springfield
from the insurgents. On September 16 General Henry Knox
had warned Congress of the coming storm.2 Knox, who like
many of the Massachusetts conservative leaders had all the
stubborn timidity of middle-class wealth, was in a panic over
the danger to established order and property and could see noth¬
ing else. He refused to consider the possibility that the people
had real grievances, and painted the situation and the insur¬
gents in the blackest colors. In his eyes they were merely
“twelve or fifteen thousand desperate and unprincipled men”
who were determined to seize and divide the property of the
rich.3 History never repeats itself in all its details, but it is
enlightening to observe how true to form the post-war psychol¬
ogy of the various classes always runs after every great conflict.

1 Mass. Gazette , Jan. 9, 1786.

2 J. P. Warren, “The Confederation and the Shays Rebellion,” American Historical
Review, vol. XI, p. 44.

3 Drake, Knox, p. 92.

160 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

Knox had been at Springfield during the trouble there, and
proceeding to Boston he took up the matter with Bowdoin and
his advisers. It was finally agreed that, without referring to
the insurrection, Congress should be asked to furnish the state
with a quota of Federal troops. Nothing was to be said to the
legislature, and the matter was left to Knox and the state’s
representatives in Congress to handle. The real danger that
existed at that time of an Indian war on the western frontier
was used as a cloak, and Congress, agreeing to the secret plan,
called for recruits. Most of these were to be raised in New
England, and a requisition was to be made on all of the states
for $500,000 for the expenses of the campaign. On October 22
Bowdoin laid the requisitions before the legislature, enlarging
on the Indian danger. The legislature immediately passed a
bill raising the troops, but the real object soon began to be
suspected. A loan of £2500 was authorized but only £500
was subscribed. On December 1 1, Jeremiah Wadsworth wrote
to Knox that “the Deacons of Massachusetts” had not raised
a man, whereas Shays had seven or eight hundred. “Had you
not better employ them than wait for the Deacons?” he in¬
quired sarcastically. “I begin to think he will govern the
State, as I see no disposition in any body else to do it.” 1

Lincoln, when ordered to proceed against the insurgents
without any money being provided, adopted prompt measures
which proved effective. He went to a club of Boston gentle¬
men, warned them that it would be best to loan part of their
wealth to save the rest, and within twenty-four hours had
financed his own expedition.2 His orders required him to
protect the sittings of the courts, to proceed to the western
counties if he deemed it advisable, and to apprehend any per¬
sons attempting “the destruction or annoyance” of the com¬
monwealth.3

1 Quoted from Knox Mss., Am. Hist. Rev., op. cit ., p. 59.

2 Letter from Lincoln to Washington, Dec. 4, 1786 and subsequent dates, Washing¬
ton Papers, Library of Congress, fol. 6. Warren, when writing his thesis, used the
transcript in the Sparks Papers at Harvard and evidently did not know of the existence
of the original. Lincoln did not state the amount he raised, but it was said to be
$20,000. Am. Hist. Rev., op. cit., p. 43.

3 Lincoln letter, op. cit., fols. 7 /.

REBELLION

161

There was no trouble at the court at Worcester, whither
Lincoln marched first. On the twenty-fourth of January, the
day after the sitting of the court, it was learned that Shays
and his forces had taken a position at Wilbraham, six miles
south of Springfield, while Luke Day and another band of
insurgents were at West Springfield.1 Lincoln at once set off
to the relief of General Shepherd, who was defending the Fed¬
eral arsenal, it being understood that the rebels were planning
to attack it on the twenty-fifth. Owing to a failure of commu¬
nications between Shays and Day, Shays made the attack alone
on the appointed date, expecting support. Four insurgents
were killed, and Shays’s force dispersed for the moment.2
Meanwhile, Lincoln and his troops had reached Springfield by
forced marches.

The General did not rest his troops even overnight, but
immediately set them in motion to prevent the union of Day
and Shays, and to cut off the retreat of the former. Day’s
force was found, attacked, and broken up with little attempt
at resistance. Shays at once retreated to Amherst, where he
was joined by stragglers from the other rebel party.3 After
one day’s rest Lincoln followed him, and as he entered Amherst
on the twenty-eighth' Shays with his followers marched into his
native township of Pelham. Lincoln refused to follow him into
this wilderness, and Shays moved on to Hadley and Hatfield.
On the twenty-ninth Lincoln sent word to the insurgents that
any privates who would surrender themselves to a justice of the
peace, deliver their arms, and take the oath of allegiance within
three days, would be recommended to the General Court for
pardon.4 The next day he wrote to Shays, pointing out the
danger of his situation and offering to recommend him and his
followers for mercy if they would surrender.5 Shays replied

1 Ibid., fol. 9; Mass. Gazette , Jan. 26, 1787.

2 Lincoln letter, op. cit., fol. 9; Shepherd’s report of the engagement was in Mass.
Gazette , Jan. 30, 1787, and has been reprinted in Am. Hist. Rev., vol. II, p. 694, and by
W. L. Smith, “Springfield in the Insurrection of 1786,” Conn. Valley Hist. Soc., Papers ,
vol. I, pp. 86/.

a Lincoln to Bowdoin, Mass. Gazette , Jan. 30, 1787, reprinted in Am. Hist. Rev., vol.
II, pp. 695/.

4 Warren, thesis, op. cit ., fol. 95.

6 Lincoln letter, op. cit., fol. 11 ; Mass. Gazette, Feb. 1, 1787.

162

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

that, however unjustifiable the rebellion may have been, it had
been due to real grievances ; that the people would disperse if
a general pardon were granted to them ; and asked for an armis¬
tice until petitions for redress could again be presented to the
legislature.1

Lincoln replied to this and a later letter that he was without
authority to delay operations. On the evening of February 2
he heard that Shays had suddenly abandoned his position and
had marched towards Petersham. Lincoln at once started in
pursuit at eight o’clock, marched thirty miles through a blind¬
ing snowstorm, and reached Petersham at nine next morn¬
ing. This now famous march took the rebels completely
by surprise. A hundred and fifty were captured and the rest
scattered in every direction. Shays himself fled to Vermont,
and the organized phase of the revolt came to an end. The
legislature, at Lincoln’s request, had declared the existence of a
state of rebellion, and strengthened by this action, Lincoln and
Warner now proceeded to stamp out the remaining embers in
the western counties — a matter that took some weeks. The
scattered bands became desperate, and the lawlessness of the
movement belongs mainly to this period. The trouble lasted
longest in Berkshire, and on February 13 Eli Parsons, one of
the rebel leaders, issued a circular calling on the people to rise
and “to Burgoyne” Lincoln and his army.2 The rebellion,
however, was at an end. Even the neighboring states, with
the exception of Rhode Island, offered no refuge, and at the
request of Massachusetts the governors of one after another
issued proclamations for the capture of the refugees.

The first week in February the legislature again met, and the
Governor reported the progress of Lincoln’s arms. Forty
thousand pounds were appropriated to pay the expense of the
campaign and bounties were offered for enlistments. The
request for pardon, which had been transmitted through Gen¬
eral Lincoln, was also considered. Petitions from various
towns begging lenient treatment for the rebels were ignored
and their own petition refused.3 Samuel Adams, as chairman

1 Lincoln letter, op. cit.> tol. 12. 2 Mass. Gazette , Feb. 27, 1787.

3 Ibid Feb. 9, 1787 .

REBELLION

163

of the committee which was appointed to consider it, made a
report that to a considerable extent consisted of futile quibbling.
Considering the gravity of the situation, the real evils of the
times, and the ignorance of many of the rebels, the third and
fourth reasons given by the committee for refusing to consider
the petition were typical of the legislative mind at its worst.
It could not be accepted, they said, because the petitioners,
although they acknowledged their “error,” considered that it
was only a “failing,” and because they appeared “to view
themselves on equal if not better standing than the legislature
by proposing 1 a reconciliation .’” 1

The legislature, whose stupidity and vacillation had been
largely responsible for the rebellion having assumed the pro¬
portions it had, now proved itself not only stupid but vindic¬
tive. General Lincoln felt that there was nothing further to
fear from the former rebels, but it is notorious that the men who
have fought an enemy show magnanimity afterward, whereas
the splenetic vindictiveness of the stay-at-homes is apt to rise
as the danger diminishes. On February 16 the legislature
passed an act refusing pardon to all in the rebel ranks who were
above the grade of non-commissioned officers, who were citi¬
zens of other states, who had ever been members of the legisla¬
ture, held any civil or military commission, or who had ever
attended any of the state or county conventions. Even the
remnant who might be admitted to amnesty were to be for¬
bidden to vote, hold any office, serve on a jury, teach school,
keep an inn, or retail spirits, for three years.

■ Lincoln wrote to Washington that as the rebellion was now
crushed and the opposition to government hourly decreasing,
the most critical moment of the movement had been reached.
He approved of the punishment of a few leaders as an example,
but said that the legislature had included such large classes
that many towns would be wholly disfranchised, and the people
would properly declare that no constitutional way had been
left to remedy their real grievances. He thought, therefore,
that there might be renewed trouble.2 With this view Wash-

^Wells, Samuel Adams , vol. Ill, p. 240.

2 Lincoln letter, op. cit ., fols. 36 ff.

164 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

ington wholly agreed.1 Fortunately the legislature, a month
later, mitigated the rigor of its measure to some extent and
appointed a commission of three persons, consisting of General
Lincoln, Samuel Phillips, Jr., and Samuel A. Otis, to receive
applications from the western rebels and pardon them without
the conditions formerly required. Certain leaders, such as
Shays, Parsons, Day, and Wheeler were exempted from this
concession.

The general voice of the state was loud against the harsh
measures of the legislature. “The people in this State are
exceedingly soured,” wrote James Sullivan to Rufus King.
“Boston has its usual prudence. Every countryman who
comes in and offers to apologize for his son or brother deluded,
is railed at and called a Rebel. . . . The people think the dis¬
qualifying Act &c to be measures to keep in office those who
are now in; the effect will be known in the spring.” 2

On the other hand, the legislature now undertook partially
to redress certain grievances the existence of which it had for¬
merly denied. The salary of the governor, which before had
been stated not to have been excessive, was reduced nearly
thirty per cent, although Bowdoin vetoed this on constitutional
grounds. The fees to civil officers were also reduced, as were
the number of sittings of the Courts of Common Pleas and
General Sessions. Some inconveniences in legal procedure
were remedied, and it was admitted that the long journeys
necessary to register deeds had been a genuine grievance.
Three registry offices instead of one were provided for the
large county of Hampshire.3 Meanwhile, the harsh treatment
of the rebels had resulted in raids of scattered parties from over
the borders of the other states where they had attempted to
take refuge, and the general election in Massachusetts was
approaching.

John Hancock, who had characteristically recovered his
health coincident with the suppression of the rebellion and the
passing of the political storm, ran in opposition to Bowdoin.

1 Fitzpatrick, “Some Sayings of Washington,” op. cit ., p. 64.

2 King, Rufus King , vol. I, pp. 214/.

3 Warren, thesis, vol. II, fol. 6.

REBELLION

i65

Sullivan’s prediction that the effect of the governmental meas¬
ures would be known in the spring was amply fulfilled. Of the
twenty-four thousand votes cast, Bowdoin received only six
thousand and Hancock eighteen thousand. Only one quarter
of the members of the new House of Representatives had been
in the former one. A number of the late rebels were elected,
and the three western counties, which on account of the expense
had sent only sixty-eight members in 1786, showed their interest
and resentment by returning one hundred and eighteen.1 The
legislative overturn amounted to a revolution in government.

Meanwhile, the commissioners were dispensing pardons
wholesale. The Supreme Court, however, condemned six
men to death in Berkshire County the first week of April.
Henry Gale was condemned on the second of May and Shat-
tuck on the twenty-second. The insurgents who had fled to
Vermont made a daring effort to save some of the condemned
men from their fate, and by a raid captured two peaceable citi¬
zens of Hampshire to hold as hostages for the lives of the rebels.
The new legislature passed an act to raise troops for the pro¬
tection of Hampshire and Berkshire counties, but at the same
time swept away the disqualifying act of the previous legisla¬
ture and, with a few exceptions, granted amnesty to all who
would take the oath of allegiance. The only exceptions were
those still under sentence of death and nine newly named,
including Shays, Day, Parsons, and other leaders. On June 18
these were also pardoned. With the Amnesty Act all opposi¬
tion to the government ceased. In the holding of the county
conventions and in the attempts to delay the sitting of the
courts the rebels had merely followed revolutionary precedent
established by the “patriots” of a few years before. These
measures had been considered legitimate then, and probably
appeared far less revolutionary and illegal to the more or less
ignorant insurgents than they did to the reformed revolution¬
aries of Boston or to subsequent historians. There is no reason
to doubt that the unanimous expressions of a desire to avoid
force and use legal methods only, which were universally heard
at the beginning of the movement, were genuine. Even after

1 Minot, History of the Insurrections , p. 176.

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

1 66

the second phase of the rebellion was reached, such conserva¬
tives as were not wholly blinded by fear or hate commented
upon the remarkable orderliness of the rebel forces. For the
most part there was no personal violence or pillage of property
until the end, when many of the rebels had been rendered des¬
perate by the failure of their cause and by the acts of the legis¬
lature. The neglect of that body to levy any taxes in 1785 and
its attempt to collect far more than the people could bear in
1786 were typical of its unstable policy, which ran alternately
from one extreme to the other and which caused a total loss of
confidence in its good faith and ability. Had the lawmakers
followed either of Washington’s suggestions, and either firmly
repressed the movement by force in its initial stage or made a
genuine attempt to redress acknowledged grievances, the move¬
ment would probably have been handled as easily as it was in
New Hampshire or Connecticut or Vermont. It is noteworthy
that the state in which the doctrine of government by the
“well-born” was carried to its furthest point and in which the
government had the narrowest franchise was the one which had
the most trouble with its people.

CHAPTER VII

ADOPTION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION

Need for Federal Union — Constitution Adopted in the Several
States — Economic Factors — Parties — Conservative Reaction
— Separation of Maine Discussed — Recalcitrancy of Rhode
Island — Vermont Admitted to the Union

The decade following the disturbed period with which we
have dealt in the past few chapters was one of great progress
toward stability. In it we find movements and tendencies
taking the definite shapes which they were long to maintain.
The Federal government was formed; the independent state
of Vermont was admitted to the Union ; trade expanded and
shifted to a considerable extent from its colonial channels to
new ones that were to prove enormously profitable in the nine¬
teenth century ; banks were founded ; and manufacturing
began to transform New England industry and life. Immi¬
gration commenced to pour in from Europe for the first time
in the eastern states since 1640; and, on the other hand, New
England emigrants of the old stock began to transform the
new West.

The failure of the Continental Congress to secure from the
states adequate powers of taxation and the right to regulate
commerce had finally resulted in the calling of a general conven¬
tion, which was to meet in Philadelphia in May 1787. The
rebellion in Massachusetts and disturbed conditions in several
other states gave timely suggestion of the need for a stronger
central authority. Of the five New England states only three
were represented in the convention. Vermont had not yet
become a member of the Confederation, and Rhode Island,
as we shall note later, declined to participate. New Hampshire

1 68

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

— it was said from lack of funds — at first took no action, and
it was not until John Langdon, a wealthy merchant, offered
to pay the expenses of a delegation that the situation was
relieved. The members consisted of Langdon himself and
Nicholas Gilman, a man of no special ability. Massachusetts
sent Elbridge Gerry, Nathaniel Gorham, Rufus King, and
Caleb Strong, a moderately good delegation of which King
was the ablest member. The strongest delegation was that
from Connecticut, which sent William Samuel Johnson, re¬
garded as one of the most learned men in the country, Roger
Sherman, and Oliver Ellsworth. All three were opposed to a
strong central government, and did their most valuable work
in upholding the rights of the states and individuals.1 It has
been claimed that Sherman was the author of the great compro¬
mise of the Constitution, by which each state has equal repre¬
sentation in the Senate, whereas representation is according
to population in the House.2 Perhaps, however, Connecticut’s
share should not be overstressed, for although her representa¬
tives were in favor of the plan and Sherman was undoubtedly
one of the leaders who thus solved the most perplexing problem
before the convention, we know little of the discussion in the
committee which reported on the matter, and of which Sherman
was not a member.3

Following the completion of the convention’s labors came the
necessity for ratification by the several states, and a lively
campaign at once began, the newspapers being filled with ar¬
ticles for and against the proposed instrument. In Connecticut
there was a greater unanimity of opinion than in any other
section of New England,4 and Humphreys wrote to Washington
that the merchants and all the men in the liberal professions,
as well as the ex-army officers, would be in favor of the new
Constitution. He added that much had been done to prepare
the minds of the people and he himself claimed to “have had

1 Max Farrand, The Framing of the Constitution , (Yale Unlv. Press, 1913), p. 200.

2 See, e.g ., Boutell, Sherman , p. 165.

3 Farrand, op. cit., p. 98.

4 The vote in the Connecticut convention was 128 yeas, and only 40 nays. B. C.
Steiner, “Connecticut’s Ratification of the Federal Constitution,” Am. Antiq. Soc.,
Proceedings, N. S., vol. XXV, p. 124.

ADOPTION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 169

no inconsiderable agency in the superintendence of two Presses
from which more newspapers are circulated I imagine, than
from any others in New England,” noting that the press was
particularly efficacious in forming public opinion “in this
quarter of the Continent.” 1

Although there were ample discussions held in all the states
regarding the political aspects of the new Constitution, the
economic factors were in reality the determining ones in its
adoption. In his first article in defense of the Constitution
in the Connecticut Courant , Ellsworth, writing under the pseudo¬
nym of “A Landholder,” stressed the economic point of view
and held that the financial interests of the farmers were identi¬
cal with those of the merchants. A Federal government of
energy, he said, was the only one which could preserve their
“liberty and riches.” 2 Naturally all those holding the obli¬
gations of the government in one form or another were in favor
of a strong authority and taxing power, and three years later
Chauncey Goodrich of Hartford wrote that even in Connecti¬
cut it was possible that without the aid of these creditors the
government could not have been formed.3

In one respect, however, the situation in Connecticut was
favorable to a sentiment for adoption even among classes that in
most states were opposed to the new plan of government. The
state had practically no European commerce of its own and
was dependent upon the imports of its neighbors for its Euro¬
pean goods. Both New York and Massachusetts had laid
import duties to provide part of the funds for their shares of
the Federal burdens, and it was estimated that New York
raised in this way from £60,000 to £80,000 a year, of which
Connecticut paid one third.4 That state claimed, therefore,
that it not only had to raise its own taxes but was paying a
considerable part of its neighbors’, and that only a strong

1 Humphreys, David Humphreys , vol. I, p. 424.

2 Reprinted by P. L. Ford, Essays on the Constitution of the United States, (Brooklyn,
i892), p. 141.

3 Geo. Gibbs, Memoirs of the Administrations of Washington and John Adams , (New
York, 1846), vol. I, p. 38.

4 O. G. Libby, Geographical Distribution of the V ote of the Thirteen States on the
Federal Constitution, (Univ. of Wisconsin, 1894), p. 16.

170

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

Federal government, with the power of general trade legislation,
could save it from ruin. In a special convention at Hartford
the Constitution was adopted easily by a vote of one hundred
and twenty-eight to forty on January 9, 1788.

In New Hampshire the situation was more complicated.
“So confident were we,” wrote a Federalist in February 1788,
“of the prevailing voice in favor of the Constitution that no
pains were taken to counteract the intrigues of a few notori¬
ously vile characters, who were too successful in the dark and
dirty business of seducing a great number of the interior towns
by false representations to fetter their delegates with positive
instructions to vote in all events against the Constitution.” 1
Rather than risk a vote under those conditions, the convention
was adjourned until June.

Speaking broadly, the state was made up of three sections
— that along the seacoast, which included the largest towns
and most of the professional men and wealthy merchants;
that in the interior; and that along the Connecticut River.
This last section was distinct in interest from the others and
closely allied to Vermont and the Connecticut River region of
Massachusetts. In this section the same argument was used
in favor of the Constitution that had been effective in Con¬
necticut. It was said that all imports came by way of the
Connecticut River from New York or Boston, and consequently
paid the import duties of other states. This argument, com¬
bined with adroit leadership of such men as Judge Livermore,
swung the section into the Federal column. It was the middle
section, made up largely of small farmers of narrow views and
limited experience, that opposed the ratification. However,
at the second convention, held at Concord, the seaboard and
Connecticut Valley towns succeeded in overriding those of
the middle section, and the Constitution was adopted by a
vote of fifty-seven to forty-seven. The only speech in the con¬
vention that has come down to us was that by Joshua Atherton,
opposing slavery and the slave trade.2

For Massachusetts we have much more ample information,
and the full text of the debates in the convention. At first, as

1 Quoted by Libby, op. cit ., p. 72. 2 Elliott’s Debates , vol. II, pp. 202 /.

ADOPTION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 17 1

in New Hampshire, the Federalists felt that sentiment was
overwhelmingly in their favor and that adoption would be a
simple matter.1 They were soon disillusioned. The opposi¬
tion, strengthened by Anti-Federal pamphlets and articles in
the press, made the most of debatable points, of the fact that the
members of the Federal Convention had been by no means
unanimous, and of the arguments advanced by Elbridge Gerry,
who, although one of the representatives of Massachusetts in
the convention, was opposed to the Constitution. Samuel
Adams was also strongly against it, and although his influence
was far from being what it had been in the earlier years, he
could use the press effectively. The most popular leader,
John Hancock, as usual, refused to commit himself until he
saw which way the popular wind blew, and his influence was
lost in favor of ratification until the last moment.

Most of the articles in the press originated in or near Boston,
both during and after the sitting of the state convention. Some
of those on the Anti-Federalist side were of considerable ability,
especially those which have been assigned to the authorship of
General James Warren and James Winthrop.2 Space does not
permit a detailed discussion of the controversy, but in general
the points made by those opposed to ratification were that
the whole method of procedure in the writing and submission of
the new frame of government had been unconstitutional ac¬
cording to the Articles of Confederation ; that the plan would
tend inevitably to the creation of an aristocracy ; that it favored
unduly the wealthy elements of the population ; that it con¬
tained no bill of rights; that it would impair the sovereignty
of the individual states ; that it would create a swarm of Federal
officeholders who would overrun the country ; that the Federal
courts would overrule the State courts ; that the general laws
enacted by the new government could not be fairly applied to
states so different in their internal culture as, for example,
Massachusetts and Georgia ; that the basis of representation
was unequal ; and that the control of the people over their
representatives was insufficient.

1 Harding, Contest in Massachusetts , pp. 1 6jf.

2 Ibid., op. cit., pp. 28 ff.; Ford, op. cit., pp. 51 ff.

17 2

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

In the only article of importance written in the western part
of the state, the old fear of the west for the east comes out
clearly. It says that in the proposed Constitution “a founda¬
tion is laid for throwing the whole power of the Federal govern¬
ment into the hands of those who are in the mercantile interests ;
and for the landed, which is the great interest of the country,
to lie unrepresented, forlorn, and without hope.” 1 From a
private letter of the outspoken editor of the first newspaper
in Maine we get the point of view of another frontier section.
“The vast Continent of America,” wrote Thomas B. Wait of
Portland, “cannot be long subjected to a Democracy if con¬
solidated into one Government — you might as well attempt to
rule Hell by Prayer.” 2

The fact is that, whereas the opinions of the common people
had remained largely unchanged, there had been a marked
reversal in that portion of the conservative element which had
been carried away temporarily by the revolutionary stream.
Administration had been found to be a far more difficult prob¬
lem than revolution. Few of the leaders at any time had been
genuine believers in democracy, and the chaotic condition of the
Federal government and such outbreaks as Shays’s Rebellion
had substantially cooled the ardor of many liberals. It is true
that in the ablest papers written in defense of the Constitution,
such as those comprised in the Federalist , the popular doctrines
of a decade before were still tacitly accepted.3 But the freedom
and equality of all men and the inherent right of “the people”
to rule, which had been so glowingly spread before them in the
war propaganda, were now quietly shelved in favor of a gov¬
ernment that could command obedience, protect the established
order, and secure property. Elbridge Gerry spoke for a large
class when he admitted that he had been “ too republican here¬
tofore,” but that he had been “ taught by experience the danger
of the levelling spirit.” 4 In fact, as has lately been pointed out,
the doctrine of popular sovereignty merely gives “a specious

1 Quoted by Harding, op. cit., p. 34.

2 Ibid., op. cit., p. 39.

3 Cf. C. E. Merriam, A History of American Political Theories, (New York, 1918),
pp. 100/.

4 Quoted by Merriam, op. cit., p. 99.

ADOPTION OF TH£ FEDERAL CONSTITUTION

i73

exactitude of form to that principle of consent for which, in
some fashion, room must be found in the modern state.” 1
This was being borne in upon the leaders of the new states and
defenders of the social order — which to them meant the order
to which they had been accustomed, and that in which they
could continue to rule.

On the other hand, as the author just quoted has also said,
“the social rights which are translated into legal rights are
almost always the rights of a limited group of men.” 2 This
truth was unconsciously realized by those who, however ig¬
norant and wrong-headed, had glimpsed a better order in which
the poor and debtors should not be exploited by law. When
in 1776 they had been told that all men were born free and
equal and entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,
they had believed it and fought for it. In 1787 they saw a
poor man kept in jail for a year with no hope of release, because
of a small debt to a creditor in the same line of business, who
thus freed himself from competition. They saw others lan¬
guishing with no prospect of ever again being at liberty to
support their families, because of debts of a few shillings only.3
The “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness” which they had
been promised thus took on for them a different coloring from
that which it had for the doctrinaire leaders of the more fortu¬
nate classes.

In the years of agitation and propaganda those leaders had
dinned in the ears of the multitude the dangers of tyranny
from a despotic government. Now the same leaders, for the
most part, asked for a strong central government just at a
time when the poor had suffered severely for several years.
All this should be kept in mind in considering the opposition
which was manifested toward the new Constitution. That
instrument reversed the popular trend and was less democratic
than many of the new State constitutions. Moreover, we
must remember that, as we have said, the question was largely
an economic one. Those who claim that the Constitution is
sacrosanct on high political grounds and should never be altered

1 H. J. Laski, The Foundations of Sovereignty, (London, 1921), p. 226.

2 Ibid., p. 229. 3 Nevins, American States, pp. 456 /.

174

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

in spite of social injustice should recall that originally it was
— to a great extent — adopted as a remedy for the evils of
a specific economic situation, that of the disturbed post-revolu¬
tionary decade of a century and a half ago. “I conceive, Sir,
that the present Constitution was dictated by commercial
necessity more than any other cause,” said Fisher Ames in
Congress, after having been one of its warmest defenders in the
Massachusetts convention.1 It was based on the antagonism
of the mercantile and agrarian groups of the day, as is clearly
brought out in the Federalist , and both groups fought for their
own interests.

Massachusetts, like New Hampshire, was divided politically
and economically into three sections. First, there was the
coast district, that of oldest settlement, largest urban popula¬
tion, greatest wealth, and leading mercantile interests. The
second, or middle, section was that of the small farmers, tilling
poorer farms than in other portions of the state, and without the
advantage of water communication. In connection with the
influence of poverty on politics, Professor Libby notes that
fifty-six of the Anti-Federal towns of that day now show 30,318
acres of abandoned farms, whereas thirty Federal towns show
only 8556. 2 The third section was that of the rich Connecti¬
cut Valley, of which the northern farming districts proved
Anti-Federal and the southern ones, with their trading towns,
Federal.

The convention met at Boston January 9, 1788. It num¬
bered three hundred and sixty-four delegates and every shade
of opinion was represented. Governor Hancock was elected
chairman on account of his popularity with the masses. The
Federal leaders formed a remarkably strong group, including
Caleb Strong, Rufus King, ex-Governor Bowdoin, General
Lincoln, Theophilus Parsons, Fisher Ames, and Theodore
Sedgwick. Elbridge Gerry, who opposed ratification, was
not a member of the convention, and the Anti-Federal leaders
could muster no such array of talents as their opponents. In¬
deed, some of them were so obscure that we know little or

1 Quoted by Beard, Economic Origins , p. 7.

2 Geographical Distribution of the Vote , p. 12.

ADOPTION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 175

nothing of them beyond their record in the debates. There
was no question but that a stronger Federal government was a
necessity if the Union were to be maintained, and this was
obvious at the time to the educated and prosperous in Massa¬
chusetts. The difficulty was that a very large proportion of
the population was neither educated nor prosperous. The
leaders of this class might make a poor showing, but that the
class itself was large and of considerable influence upon public
opinion was indicated by the vote on ratification.

Had the question been submitted, as it was in Rhode Island,
to votes of individual town meetings, or even had it been sub¬
mitted to the convention as soon as assembled, it is unquestion¬
able that Massachusetts would have defeated the Constitution.
The Federalist leaders first secured the convention method,
and next, they avoided an early vote by wisely passing a reso¬
lution that the document should be considered by paragraphs
before any vote should be taken on it as a whole. In general
the discussion dealt with the same topics that had already
been dwelt upon at length in the press. Two minor points
indicated certain trends of opinion of the day — the lack of
a religious test for office and the section relating to slavery.
As to the first, it is noteworthy that the absence of any such
test was upheld by the clergymen who were members of the
convention, and objected to only by some of the more narrow¬
minded lay members.1 Slavery, which had been virtually for¬
bidden in the Constitutions of New Hampshire, Vermont, and
Massachusetts, was roundly denounced by several of the mem¬
bers, and the clause relating to it in the Federal constitution
severely criticized.

A careful reading of the entire debate and of much of the
controversial writings in the press reveals that the objections
of the Anti-Federalists in Massachusetts had three important
bases. One was the mistrust and disbelief in delegated powers,
another was the conflict of interest between the commercial
and agrarian groups, and the third was a similar conflict be¬
tween the democrats and those who believed, like John Adams,
in the right of the cultured and well-born to govern the state.

1 Elliott’s Debates , vol. II, pp. 118, 120, 148.

i7 6 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

It has been claimed, indeed, that this last difference of opinion
underlay the main part of the opposition in the state.1

After two weeks of debate, the Federalists realized that they
were not strong enough to secure a vote unqualifiedly ratifying
the Constitution. They therefore decided to introduce amend¬
ments which would meet the main objections of their opponents,
but which could be passed as recommendations to Congress
without invalidating the ratification of the main body of the
instrument. However, the distrust which the people felt for
the advocates of adoption was so great that it was deemed
necessary to secure someone who was not of their party to
introduce the resolution. The opposition, King wrote to James
Madison, “ seems to arise from an opinion that is immovable,
that some injury is plotted against them — that the system is
the production of the rich and ambitious . . . and that the
consequence will be the establishment of two orders in Society,
one comprehending the opulent and great, and the other the
poor and illiterate. ” 2

There was at that time no immigrant problem in Massachu¬
setts. There had been practically no immigration of new
stock since 1640, and the population was remarkably homo¬
geneous. Practically every family in the state had been there
for a century and a half. It may be pointed out, under these
conditions, that if more than one half of the elected delegates
from all the towns in the state were firmly possessed of the no¬
tions that King attributed to them, — and they seem to have been
so, — all things could not have been so well with the govern¬
mental and educational systems of the commonwealth or with
the social activity of the Puritan gentry as the panegyrists
of the purity and simplicity of colonial days would have us
believe.

Up to January 30, Hancock had not taken his seat as chair¬
man. The gout — which, as John Adams said, always con¬
veniently prevented the popular idol from being about when
there was anything unpopular to be done — had prevented

1 Harding, Contest in Massachusetts , p. 76.

2 King, Rufus King , vol. I, p. 317 ; cf. [Jonathan Jackson] Thoughts upon the Political
Situation . . . (Worcester, 1788), p. 118.

ADOPTION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 177

his appearance. King wrote a few days before the end of the
month that “as soon as the majority is exhibited on either
side I think his Health will suffice him to be abroad.” 1 It
was pointed out to him that the Constitution could be ratified
if the recommendatory amendments were added. He was
offered the opportunity to introduce the resolution ratifying
the Constitution and suggesting the amendments, thus gain¬
ing for him the prestige of apparently having been the one who
had composed the differences between the two parties. He was
also promised the support of the Bowdoin following for the
governorship in the next election, and apparently he was told
that if Virginia did not come into the Union, which was then
doubtful, he would be considered as the candidate for the vice¬
presidency.2

The scheme succeeded. Hancock arose in the convention
at the appointed time and read as his own the amendments
which had been prepared by Theophilus Parsons.3 The farce
was played out, Samuel Adams was won over, and when the
final vote was taken it was in favor of ratification by the slight
majority of nineteen in three hundred and fifty-five votes.
The distribution of the vote is even more instructive. Of the
three sections into which we have noted the state to have been
divided by economic interests, the eastern one was seventy-
three per cent in favor and twenty-seven against ; the western?
forty-two per cent in favor and fifty-eight against ; whereas
the middle was only fourteen per cent in favor and eighty-six
against.4

When Massachusetts recorded her decision only five states
had accepted the Constitution.5 Along the whole seaboard
the Federal leaders felt that the decision would determine the
result in New York and the whole question of adoption. There
is no doubt that ratification by Massachusetts was actually the
turning-point in the contest, and that the Constitution would

1 Quoted by Harding, op. cit ., p. 85.

2 There seems to be no reason to doubt the authenticity of this deal. Vide Harding,
op. cit., pp. 84 ff- ; Morse, Federalist Party , pp. 50 ff., 212 ff.

3 Parsons, Theophilus Parsons , pp. 65 /.

4 Libby, Geographical Distribution of the Votes , p. 12.

5 Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, and Connecticut.

1 78 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

not have been adopted had her vote been adverse. Whether
chaos and civil war between the states would have resulted,
as many statesmen believed, it is impossible to say. Certainly
the subsequent political development of America would have
been different from what it has been. Almost to the last min¬
ute the majority was against it. The scheme evolved by a
small but shrewd and able group, utilizing the vanity of a
popular idol, saved the day. It is an instructive example,
when we are led to consider “social forces” only as determining
the historic process, and individuals as negligible.

In Rhode Island, as we have seen, during the paper-money
agitation the mercantile-town party had lost control of the
government, and the country party was firmly in the saddle.
The question of appointing delegates to the Federal Convention
came before the legislature in March 1787, the same session
at which the state repudiated its financial obligations to the
Confederacy. By a majority of twenty-three the legislature
refused to participate in the convention. The minority were
furious, and the other states bitterly condemned the stand
taken by Rhode Island. To her paper-money frauds and her
repudiation of her obligations was now added refusal to co¬
operate with the rest of the continent in the endeavor to form
a more perfect government. At once she became a pariah
among her sister states. Talk was heard of forcing her to
join ; of not letting her in under any circumstances ; and even
of dividing her territory among her neighbors.1

When the convention finished its labors and the Constitu¬
tion was submitted to the states, some notice had to be taken of
it. There was a strong minority in Rhode Island in favor
of ratification, led by such men as Marchant and Champlin
of Newport, and Arnold and Bowen of Providence, but the
great majority, both within the legislature and without, were
opposed. It was felt by these opponents that the surest way
to defeat ratification was to submit the Constitution to the
town meetings rather than to the legislature, and this was ac¬
cordingly carried out. Instead of voting, however, the towns
of Newport and Providence both gave instructions to call a

1 Bates, Rhode Island , pp. 152 ff.

ADOPTION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 179

convention for the purpose. The Federalists, in order to show
their disapprobation of the method of voting by towns, ab¬
stained for the most part from voting at all, and the popular
vote when taken showed, therefore, 2708 against ratification
and only 237 in favor in an electorate of over 6000. 1 In March
and October the legislature twice refused to consider a con¬
vention. By this time New Hampshire had ratified as the
ninth state to do so, and the Constitution was accordingly
declared in force. By the time eleven states had assented,
the Rhode Island legislature met in March, but for a fourth
and a fifth time defeated the demand for a convention. The
mercantile element realized what it would mean to the pros¬
perity and commerce of the state to be outside the pale of a
Union that could cut off her trading with all parts of the con¬
tinent and which, in view of her attitude on money, credit,
and the violation of contracts, would be likely to do so. As we
have said, however, the Tory emigration had removed many
of the most able men in the state, and the Federal party lacked
leaders. The farmers could not yet see the result of their acts,
and the demand for a convention was defeated for the sixth
time. In July 1789 the new Federal Congress passed an Act
by which all imported articles received into the Union through
Rhode Island should be considered as coming from foreign
ports. The Assembly began to weaken. By January 1790
North Carolina had ratified, and Rhode Island was the only
state that had not done so. Meanwhile, Congress had pre¬
pared the amendments to the Constitution which had been
generally demanded, and these factors, together with the new
revenue laws, were of influence on the minds of the Anti-
Federalists.2

Finally, a convention was agreed to and met in March 1790,
but failed to act and was adjourned to May. The state elec¬
tion which intervened was a complete victory for the Anti-
Federalists. Coercion was now freely discussed in Congress
by representatives of the other states, who were losing patience.
The feeling was that the maritime situation of a small state
like Rhode Island would not permit her to be left out of the

1 Bates, op. cii., p. 164. 2 Bates, op. cit.} p. 177.

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

i So

Union, and that her recalcitrancy should not be allowed to
jeopardize the success of the whole. “Enemies they must
be, or fellow citizens, and that in a very short time,” wrote
one Congressman.1 At last a bill passed the United States
Senate prohibiting all commercial intercourse between any
part of the Union and Rhode Island, and demanding payment
by that state of a part of her share of the Federal debt. This
meant that the way would be paved for armed coercion ; but the
House was not yet ready for so strong a measure. The struggle
within Rhode Island continued, Newport threatening to secede
from the state and inciting other towns to do so and to join
the Union should the state not ratify. At last, on May 29,
ratification was carried by the close vote of thirty-four to thirty-
two, with unquestionably the great majority of the people of
the commonwealth against it.2

At the time of the adoption of the Constitution by Massa¬
chusetts, the fear that it might lessen the chances for eventual
separation of Maine from that state had probably accounted
for some of the opposition manifested in the province, and in
1791 the agitation for seceding and setting up a separate gov¬
ernment was renewed. Among the reasons given by those in
favor of the movement were the inconvenience of having all
the papers in suits in the Supreme Judicial Court kept in Boston,
the unequal operation of taxes, the expense of having to travel
to Massachusetts across the intervening state of New Hamp¬
shire to attend the legislature, and the difficulty of procuring
legislation favorable to the peculiar interests of the province.
It was pointed out that the population of Maine was already
greater than that of Vermont and nearly double that of Rhode
Island or Delaware, and that the assumption of state debts
and the financial situation at the moment made the time pe¬
culiarly opportune for separation.3 In a referendum held the
next year, however, the vote was only two thousand and eighty-

1 Bates, op. cit ., p. 187.

2 The story is given with many documents, by Staples, R.I. in the Cont. Cong.,
pp. 574/.

3 An Address to the Numerous and Respectable Inhabitants of the Great Extensive Dis¬
trict of Maine, March, 1791. [Broadside] cf. [Daniel Davis] An Address to the Inhab¬
itants of the District of Maine, (Portland, 1791), pp. 8 ff.

ADOPTION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 181

four in favor of seceding, whereas twenty-four hundred and
thirty-eight voted against it, and the matter was not seriously
agitated again until 1815.1

During all this time Vermont had continued a sovereign
state outside the Union and with no connection with any other
power. Levi Allen had maintained negotiations with the
British government, largely for his personal advantage, it
appears, and when he was in England in 1784, claiming to
have a commission from the state, he was actually possessed
of no such document, although he received one for the purpose
of furthering the project of a canal two years later.2 In July
1788 Ethan Allen, then in Quebec, wrote to Lord Dorchester
representing that Vermont had serious objections, on account
of economic interests and fear of embroiling herself in the inter¬
state quarrels, to uniting with the rest of the new nation. The
leading men, he said, were not in favor of a republican form
of government, and desired reunion with Great Britain.3

Meanwhile, New York had changed her attitude, and in her
anxiety to add another northern state to the Union in order
to strengthen the power of the North in Congress, was willing
to come to an adjustment with Vermont over all matters
formerly in dispute. Commissioners were appointed from the
two states, and in 1790 finally agreed that New York should
relinquish all claims to lands within the boundaries of Vermont
for the lump sum of $30,ooo.4 This paved the way for the
entrance of Vermont into the Union should she so desire, and
in January of the following year a convention was held at
Bennington to debate the question of adopting the Federal
Constitution. It was pointed out by those in favor of doing
so that the position of Vermont as an independent country
was an impossible one. Forming as she did a wedge running
into the new powerful Union of states, and occupying a posi¬
tion on the frontier of the British, it would be impossible for
the United States to leave her out permanently. Should the

! 1 E. Stanwood, “The Separation of Maine from Massachusetts,” Mass. Hist. Soc.,

Proceedings , Ser. Ill, vol. I, p. 13 1.

2 Records of Governor and Council , vol. Ill, pp. 408/.

3 Report on the Canadian Archives , 1890, pp. 210/.

4 Records of Governor and Council , vol. Ill, pp. 421 /.

i82

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

nation wish to exert itself, it had ample military and commer¬
cial powers to force her to unite whether she desired it or not ;
and should she be shut out from all the ports and commercial
advantages of the United States, her own commerce would
be smothered, as Canada did not afford sufficient markets
for her produce and was difficult of access from large parts of
the state. Ratification was voted almost unanimously, there
being only four dissentient votes out of one hundred and nine.1
This cut the ground from under the feet of Levi Allen, who had
continued negotiations with the British and was in their pay.2
Affirming to the British authorities that he had always been
a Loyalist, he received from them £100 a year, claiming at the
same time that he was in close touch with Governor Chittenden.
On January 20, 1791 Congress passed an act admitting Vermont
to the Union as the fourteenth state, and the New England
section was once more united.

1 Records of Governor and Council , vol. Ill, pp. 464 /.

2 Report on the Canadian Archives , 1889, p. 53.

y

CHAPTER VIII

THE ECONOMIC STRUCTURE, 1790-1800

Question of Sectional Strengths after Revolution — New Eng¬
land Declines in Comparative Importance — Economic Character
of the Population — Lack of Markets for Agricultural Produce

— Conditions of Agriculture — Movements of Population — Land
Companies — Manufactures — Opening of the Oriental Trade —
Speculation

In order to understand the political and social movements
of the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nine¬
teenth century in New England, it is necessary to make a brief
survey of the economic basis of that section. First of all we
may note that the Eastern States had been steadily declining
in importance as compared with the other parts of the Union,
and under the new conditions this fact began to acquire a
significance which it had not had under the imperial adminis¬
tration before the Revolution. It is true that there had always
been jealousy between the different colonies, as well as between
the loosely compacted groups into which the colonies naturally
coalesced. At the opening of the struggle there may be con¬
sidered as having been five such groups : Canada and the Far
West, New England, the Middle Colonies, the South, and the
West Indies. So long as any conflict of interest between them

— as notably in the case of the economic relations between
New England and the West Indies — was finally determined
by the Parliament across the sea, the question of their own com¬
parative strength in wealth and population was more or less
negligible. After the achievement of independence by some
of them, however, the situation altered entirely. As the
interests of the different sections of the new American nation

184 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

were diverse, or at least were considered so, and as national
sentiment was weak, it seemed obvious that each state or sec¬
tion would have to depend upon the strength it could muster
to protect its own prosperity and welfare. As colonies within
the British empire, it had made little difference, save to pro¬
vincial pride, whether or not Virginia had a larger population
than Massachusetts ; but the question assumed a new aspect
when England was no longer the arbiter, and when any con¬
flict of interest between states or sections had to be determined
by votes in Congress, in which body representation was based
upon population.

As compared with the rest of the colonies, the decline in
population in New England had been steady from the begin¬
ning. In 1650 the people of that section had numbered, in
round figures, fifty- two per cent of the whole. By 1700 they
formed only thirty-eight per cent, by 1750 twenty-eight per
cent, and by 1790 but twenty-five per cent. A New Englander
in 1790, studying the figures of the first Federal census taken
in that year, together with such other statistics as might be
available to him, could have found no hope anywhere.

We have already noted the almost stationary population
of Boston, increasing perhaps two thousand only in a half cen¬
tury, as contrasted with the rapid growth of both New York
and Philadelphia, which, both numbering about thirteen
thousand in 1750, gained thirty-three thousand and forty-two
thousand respectively in forty years.1 Isaac Weld, speaking
of the Massachusetts capital about 1800, wrote that “though
it has a most excellent harbour, and has always been inhabited
by an enterprising and industrious people, yet it is now inferior
both in size and commerce, to Baltimore, which was little more
than the residence of a few fishermen thirty years ago.” 2
This statement, although somewhat exaggerated, was not so
far from the truth as to population at least. Weld recognized

1The figures, when no other source is indicated, are taken from the tables in
A Century of Population Growth , (Washington, 1909). Although these are not wholly
accurate and should be checked with other compilations, they are sufficiently so for our
present purpose.

2 Travels through the States of North America , 1795, z79^y z797> (London, 1807), vol.
I, p. 56.

Fort W ARREN AND BOSTON HARBOR, 1 8 53
From an unpublished, water-color sketch by Thomas Kelah Wharton; original in the New York Public Library

THE ECONOMIC STRUCTURE, 1790-1800 185

that the trouble with Boston was that it had no navigable
river and no hinterland from which to draw. Salem was grow¬
ing more rapidly, but Newport had fewer residents than it
had had forty years earlier.

Comparing the largest two states of the Northern and South¬
ern sections, we find that the white population of Virginia had
come to outnumber that of Massachusetts by over twenty-
five thousand. To this we have to add one hundred and
seventy-five thousand votes more, or three fifths of the slaves,
that being the ratio allowed by the Constitution for slave
representation. Apparently, moreover, in spite of the large
families which we think of as characteristic of New England
atthis period, the whites were increasing more rapidly in Vir¬
ginia than in the Bay State, for whereas in the latter there were
eighty-one hundred fewer white boys under sixteen than there
were adults, in the former there were fifty-five hundred more.

An interesting side-light on the two sections, partly economic
and partly social, may be derived from the figures of receipts
at the various post-offices, the period taken being the three
months ending January 5, 1790. Boston was the only office
in New England in which the income was over $100, the re¬
ceipts there being $665, at Worcester $11, Springfield $12,
Salem $81, Hartford $74, New Haven $47, and Norwalk $3, to
name a few of the more typical communities. On the other
hand, in Virginia, Richmond took in $482, Petersburg $322,
Alexandria $290, Fredericksburg $237, and such practically
unknown places as Dumfries and Cabin Point exceeded Hart¬
ford and Worcester respectively.1

The steady rise of the Middle States and the South at the
expense, comparatively, of the influence in the future of his
own section, stirred deep anxiety and jealousy in the breast
of the New Englander of that day. There was also the buga¬
boo of the possible rise of a new West beyond the mountains,
threatening to upset still further the balance of power between
what were regarded as merely federated states. The states
of New England were ancient and, for the most part, well
defined, and it may be added, well filled, for the industrial

1 American State Papers , Post Office, pp. 9 ffi

1 86

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

revolution, with its possibilities of enormous increase in popu¬
lation, was yet undreamed of. The great bulk of the people,
as in all the states, were farmers, and there were reasons, which
we shall discuss presently, why the limits of an agricultural
population in New England appeared to have been reached.

The anxious observer might, indeed, have found some com¬
fort in the return of the people at this time to their old habits
of industry, and the gradual disappearance of the extrava¬
gance of the war period among those who could not afford it.
“Habits of industry and frugality are taking place of those of
luxury and dissipation, more generally and with more celerity
than I expected,” wrote Stephen Higginson from Boston.
“It is a growing Idea, that the manners contracted during the
War must be done away; and that every Class of Citizens
must expect only to thrive by the means comonly succesful in a
time of peace.” 1 Homespun was once more replacing imported
finery in farmers’ houses, and spinning-bees were becoming as
popular as they had been in Stamp Act days.2 But in 1790
both the influence and the welfare of the section were menaced,
and as the problems of New England were largely peculiar to
that portion of the country, it came to pass in the troubled
years which were beginning that it should be forced into an
attitude which was violently sectional.

In 1790 about eighty-five per cent of the entire New England
population lived in towns of less than three thousand inhabit¬
ants; nor must it be forgotten that by “towns” were meant
not the compact communities of modern days but the New
England “townships,” which averaged more than forty square
miles in extent and in some instances were considerably larger.
Only nine had a population of between four and five thousand,
three between five and six thousand, and only six numbered
more than that. Outside of a very few of the largest centres,
such as Boston and Salem, it may be said that practically
every family lived in whole or large part from the profits or

1 “Letters of Stephen Higginson,” American Historical Association, Report , 1896,
vol. I, p. 781.

2 R. M. Tryon, Household Manufactures in the United States, / 640-1860 , (Chicago,
I9H), PP- 1 23/.

THE ECONOMIC STRUCTURE, 1790-1800 187

products of agriculture. The only commercial towns were
those along the coasts and the Connecticut River, and in some
of these there were small classes of citizens who had become
wholly divorced from the soil and who were therefore dependent
upon the farmers of the surrounding country within a transpor¬
tation radius of approximately twenty miles, or upon those
who could ship by water. This, of course, was notably true
of Boston. Even twenty years later in many of the maritime
towns of from three to seven thousand population, such as
New Haven, New London, and Hartford, apparently about
one half of the inhabitants were farmers, so that the demand
for agricultural produce in such towns could not have extended
far beyond their own borders.1

In rural communities — and in 1790 practically the whole
of New England may be considered as one vast community
of that type — there is no local market for agricultural prod¬
uce unless division of labor has progressed so far as to cause
the emergence of a class that does not raise its own food but
devotes itself to other forms of activity. There was indeed,
at this time, a certain amount of specialization. But even in
the case of artisans such as shoemakers, business men such as
millers and storekeepers, professional men such as doctors,
lawyers, and clergymen, there were few members of any com¬
munity who were without enough land of their own to make
them independent, as to their food supplies, of their neighbors
who devoted their entire energies to their farms and household
industries. The markets for any agricultural surplus were
therefore limited to the small ones of the maritime towns or
such as might be built up by an export trade.

There were three regions to which the farmer who was
located near enough to water transport could ship his surplus :
the city of New York, the Southern states, — in which agri¬
culture was more specialized, — and the West Indies. The
first was a limited market and open to keen competition from
Long Island and New Jersey. A careful analysis of the second,
which was mainly confined to the coastal plain of South Caro-

1 P. W. Bidwell, Rural Economy in New England at the Beginning of the Nineteenth
Century , (New Haven, 1916), p. 292.

1 88

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

lina and Georgia, indicates that even twenty years later that
market was also very limited and subject to competition by
the farmers of the Southern highlands. As Bidwell says, the
fact that the comparatively few New England farmers who
were in a position to ship to so distant and small a market did
so is the best evidence of the utter lack of any market nearer
home.1

Of the three export markets, by far the most important was
the West Indies, although it is impossible to reach any accu¬
rate estimate of the amounts of farm produce which were
shipped thither from New England. We have spoken many
times of the importance of the West India trade to the circle
of New England commerce, but it must be considered that
three of the most valuable items of export were fish, lumber,
and horses. With the first two of these the farmer would have
little or nothing to do, while the export of horses had declined
very heavily during the Revolution and the trade was never
recovered.2 After Jay’s treaty was signed, moreover, the size
of the vessels was limited to seventy tons, about one half their
former capacity, and these usually made but two trips a year.
If from the total figures of exports from the whole United States
to all the West India Islands we deduct the items mentioned
and others which were not the produce of farms, as well as the
large shipments of wheat and flour from the Middle and South¬
ern States in which New England had no share, it becomes
evident that the market afforded to the farmer of that section
could have been only a moderate one.

Whatever the total exports to all three of these markets
may have aggregated, they afforded an outlet for surplus pro¬
duction only to those farmers who were located within a few
miles of navigable waters; for, with a few exceptions, the
roads were so bad as to preclude the transport of articles over
them in any considerable bulk at a cost which would make
their sale profitable. This absence of markets for the only

1 P. W. Bidwell, Rural Economy in New England at the Beginning of the Nineteenth
Century , (New Haven, 1916), pp. 294^., 300.

2 Deane Phillips, Horse Raising in Colonial New England , (Cornell University, 1922),
p. 927.

THE ECONOMIC STRUCTURE, 1790-1800 189

produce of by far the largest part of the population had far-
reaching effects. Having nothing to sell, the purchases of
most of the farmers were of necessity limited to the smallest
number of articles possible, and for these they bartered their
corn or hay or wood or even their labor, at the country store.
Everything of all sorts, clothes, tools, furniture, that could be
made on the farm was manufactured there by old and young,
hardly any member of the household of whatever age escaping
some appointed task in the family econon^. This naturally
tended to retard division of labor in the community. The
period was, it is true, an era of transition, and the making of
hats had already become a shop industry, while shoemaking
had entered the capitalist stage, with the craftsmen, however,
still working in their homes.1 But for the most part even
those who specialized in some handicraft were still itiner¬
ants, going from house to house to ply their trade, and in
most of New England there was no whole-time occupation
by which a man could earn a living for himself and his family
save farming.

Although the versatility thus enjoined upon the members
of a farmer's household and the need of making that household
almost wholly self-sustaining bred in the New England farmer
that “Yankee ingenuity” which has become proverbial, it also
had other and less desirable effects. For one thing, it kept
agriculture at a very low level of efficiency, and the population
at a low standard of living.2 All the implements were of primi¬
tive type, clumsy and indescribably costly in the expenditure
of labor required. The wooden “Old Colony plow,” for ex¬
ample, which was in use in New England until 1820, had a
ten-foot beam and a four-foot landslide, and it has been said
that “it made the furrows stand up like the ribs of a lean horse
in the month of March.” There was no real labor-saving farm-
machinery in general use until 1850, and the only invention in
the period covered by this chapter that foreshadowed a later
successor was a cast-iron plow, invented in New Jersey in the

1 For the latter, vide Blanche E. Hazard, Organization of the Boot and Shoe Industry
in Massachusetts before 1875, (Harvard University Press, 1921), pp. 24 ff.

2 Bidwell, op. cit.y pp. 352, 368.

190

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

1790’s. Even this was for long rejected by the farmers because
they feared it would injure the fertility of the soil and poison
the land.1

South Carolina and Pennsylvania both had organized
societies for the promotion of agriculture before the Massa¬
chusetts Society for that purpose was founded in 1792.2 For
many years, however, these societies had little or no influence
upon the great mass of farmers, who considered any new ideas
as impractical, but the fundamental factor making for ineffi¬
ciency was the lack of a market. With his love of money and
his versatile ingenuity, the Yankee farmer would undoubtedly
have become a much better agriculturist had he had an outlet
for any surplus production which new methods might have
brought him. When, however, by producing a surplus he could
do nothing to improve his position or scale of living, he pre¬
ferred to cultivate his acres wastefully rather than to trouble
himself with new and more intensive methods. In the ab¬
sence of a market he could have been induced to incur the risks
of “newfangled notions” only by pressure of population; but
at this time the line of least resistance from this evil was emi¬
gration to new and usually richer lands.

Although the life of the average farmer’s family produced
strength of character, versatility, and a sense of self-reliance,
it also induced narrow-mindedness, intellectual stagnation,
and an economy that too often became mere sordid mean¬
ness. It is easy for those who have attained to a standard of
living which provides them with leisure and release from a
numbing round of daily toil to talk of “plain living and high
thinking.” But anyone who, either from personal experience
or from intimate contact with others, has been able to observe
the effects of too long hours of labor, cannot but realize that
overfatigue is fatal to intellectual development. The small
farm of the old type was an unsurpassed school for boyhood
but an intellectual prison for manhood. A farmer’s boy was

1 H. W. Qualntance, “The Influence of Farm Machinery on Production and Labor,”
American Economic Association, Publications , Ser. Ill, vol. V, pp. 4, 7. The cotton
gin was in use only in the South.

2 C. L. Flint, “A Hundred Years’ Progress,” Report, U. S. Department of Agricul¬
ture, (Washington, 1872), p. 282.

THE ECONOMIC STRUCTURE, 1790-1800 191

well equipped for success, but he achieved it only on condition
of leaving the farm before it became too late.

The extraordinary movements of population which set in
after the Revolution — to which we have already alluded —
showed that discontent with these conditions, — pressure on the
soil from an agricultural standpoint, and the lack of oppor¬
tunities for making a livelihood other than by farming, — were
beginning to be widespread. It has been estimated that
between 1790 and 1820 the natural increase in population in
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut would have
been 1,681,673 persons, had they all remained within those
states. As it was in fact only 881,594, approximately 800,000
persons must have emigrated.1 The movement is well illus¬
trated by analyzing the changes of population in such a com¬
munity as Middlefield, a small hill-town in western Massa¬
chusetts. In 1770 there were only two families living in this
territory, increasing to thirty by 1780. In the next decade
nearly a hundred families, consisting of six hundred individuals,
took possession of farm lands. It is noteworthy that these
early settlers came from fifty-four different towns in Massa¬
chusetts and Connecticut, one from New York, the origin of
eighteen families being unknown.2 As the amount of desirable
land was limited, and as there was no occupation but farming,
there was also a continuous and increasing exodus of young
men. Forty of these had left by 1790, fifty-eight more by
1800, ninety-five more by 1810, and ninety-one more by 1820.
In spite of this there was an increase in the population of the
town of over two hundred between 1790 and 1810. Of those
who left, about one half settled temporarily or permanently
in other Massachusetts towns, about a quarter in New York,
and the remainder in Ohio and other parts of the West.3 The
movement illustrates how the mobile population was taking
up every corner of the available land in the older states, and
how the more energetic, ambitious, or restless were moving out
of those states altogether.

1 Bidwell, op. cit., p. 387.

2E. P. & P. M. Smith, History of the Town of Middlefield, privately printed, (1924),

PP- 27> 393- 3 Ibid ., pp. 27, 1 1 1, 395.

192

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

Before the Revolution the population of Rhode Island and
Connecticut had been increasing at the rate of over twenty-
eight per cent in every decade. In that between 179° and 1800
the population of the former remained stationary and that of
the latter increased only five and one-half per cent. A further
analysis enables us to realize the results of a lack of markets
for agricultural produce and the absence of any division of labor
as affording means of earning a living. There was no differ¬
ence in the fertility of the soil or inhabitants in the two towns
of Lebanon and Greenwich, yet between 1790 and 1810 the
population of the former decreased twenty per cent, whereas
that of the latter increased twelve per cent. The explanation
would seem to be that whereas Greenwich was within easy
access of the New York market, Lebanon was fifteen miles from
the nearest water transport. The same results may be found
by examining counties occupying similarly contrasted loca¬
tions. If we approach the problem from the other standpoint,
that of division of labor, we may take the two towns of Farm¬
ington and Danbury. The former had about twenty per cent
more land than the latter and both were equally good for farm¬
ing, but in the two decades from 1790 the number of people in
Farmington, which was purely an agricultural community,
increased less than two per cent, whereas that in Danbury
increased twenty per cent, the explanation being that the
manufacture of hats in the latter gave employment to a large
number of persons not engaged in farming, and also enlarged
the market for those who were.1 It was becoming obvious that
unless new markets could be created at home or abroad New
England had reached its limit of wealth and population as an
agricultural section. We shall see in later chapters how the
development of manufactures both enlarged the farmers' mar¬
kets and permitted a vast increase in population by opening
new means of making a living.

Undoubtedly the hard times immediately following the
Revolution, and the financial confusion in Rhode Island owing
to paper money, had much to do with bringing about the
extraordinary shifts in population. It has been estimated that

1 Bidwell, op. cit., pp. 399 ff.

THE ECONOMIC STRUCTURE, 1790-1800 193

within six weeks after the collapse of Shays’s Rebellion over
seven hundred families emigrated from western Massachusetts
into Vermont.1 Brissot de Warville, speaking of conditions in
Rhode Island in 1788, said that if paper money were not speed¬
ily abolished he thought the whole state would “be unpeopled,”
and that “nearly all the honest people of Newport would quit
the place if they could sell their effects.” 2 As the movement
increased it came to embrace all classes, and grew to be almost a
mania. First there went the restless and debt-ridden, low in
the economic scale ; then the farmers looking for good land at
low cost ; and lastly the mechanics and professional men seek¬
ing openings in localities of rapidly increasing population.3
Mingled with these streams were many sons of families which
were well-to-do, or which had been — for it is a mistake to
think of early New England as wholly a land of frugality and
steady habits. “It has been observed frequently,” said a
writer in the Norwich Packet in 1792, “that estates, in this
part of the country do not often last in a family more than
three generations, and frequently not so long. A man by his
industry and economy gets a large estate for his son, his son
lives in affluence and brings up a family of children in idleness
and dissipation, who think the wealth of their father can never
be spent.” 4 Thus early began the American tradition of
“three generations from shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves.”

The western shores of Lake Champlain and the older towns
of the Hudson River Valley became largely transformed by the
influx of New England men. The present city of Hudson was
changed in four years from a mere Dutch farm in 1784 to a
New England commercial town with a considerable population,
warehouses, wharves, and shipping.5 Visiting the new settle¬
ment of Whitesborough on the Mohawk in 1788, Watson re¬
ported that “settlers are continually pouring in from the Con¬
necticut hive,” and that there were already three hundred
“Yankees on their muster list.”6 Binghamton was settled

1 Morse, Federal Party , p. 1 83 note.

2 New Travels in the United States . . . 1788, (London, 1794), vol. I, p. 120.

3 Mathews, Expansion of New England , p. 166. 4 Issue of Jan. 5, 1792.

6 Elkanah Watson, Men and Times of the Revolution , (New York, 1856), p. 266.

6 Ibid., p. 271.

194

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

from Connecticut and Massachusetts, and in the places just
mentioned and many others New England ideas and type of
social structure were being carried westward in the course of
expansion, although the intermixture of men from so many
different localities bred a new diversity of opinion and a broader
outlook. Even within New England the ferment must have
meant the breaking down of many old prejudices and narrow
points of view. The men of Middlefield, for example, coming
from over sixty different towns, must have acquired a broader
vision and a new tolerance when acting together in their own
town meeting and in exchange of experiences in the evening’s
talk beside the roaring fires.

The movement was largely an individualistic one, resulting
from the simultaneous desire on the part of thousands to better
their condition in one way or another ; but capitalists soon saw
attractive opportunities for speculation and began operations
on a scale undreamed of before the war. In 1786 the state of
New York ceded to Massachusetts, in friendly settlement of
that state’s western claims, the title to about six million acres
near Lake Ontario. Two years later, Massachusetts sold the
preemption claims to this land, for a million dollars, to Nathan¬
iel Gorham and Oliver Phelps, representing an Association
which secured by purchase the Indian title to about one half
of it. The proprietors then offered the land for sale to settlers
in townships, of which fifty had been sold by 1790, and the
immigration from Connecticut, western Massachusetts, and
Vermont was said to be beyond belief.1

Another association, the Ohio Company, operating in south¬
eastern Ohio, was not a typical land company but largely an
attempt to secure for the revolutionary soldiers of Connecticut
their dues by means of a sale of western lands by Congress.2
General Rufus Putnam was the leading spirit in it at first, later
being joined by the Reverend Manasseh Cutler. The relations
of the Association to its settlers were unique, and it has been
said that no other land company in America can match its rec-

10. Turner, Holland Purchase , (Buffalo, 1850), pp. 326 ff.

2 A. B. Hulbert, Records of the Original Proceedings of the Ohio Company , (Marietta,
1917), vol. h P- xlviii.

THE ECONOMIC STRUCTURE, 1790-1800 195

ord in laying the foundations of an American state. Through
its efforts New England influence advanced yet farther into the
frontier region of the new West. Cutler’s relations with Con¬
gress had been extremely close and influential just at the time
when the Northwest Ordinance was being considered, and it
may have been partly due to him that the New England town¬
ship system was that which was adopted as the basis of the de¬
velopment of the enormous territory embraced under that Act.1

The speculations of the Duer group in New York had also
extended into lands, and in 1791, in company with Generals
Henry Knox and Henry Jackson of Boston, they bought two
million acres in Maine from the Massachusetts government, at
ten cents an acre. Efforts were made to bring in immigrants
from France, but the scheme failed with the general financial
crash that occurred the following year.

The relations between agricultural prosperity, efficiency,
value of land, and growth of population on the one hand and
an adequate market for surplus agricultural produce on the
other were well understood by such men as Alexander Hamil¬
ton. “It is evident,” he wrote in his great Report on Manu¬
factures in 1791, “that the exertions of the husbandman will
be steady or fluctuating, vigorous or feeble, in proportion to
the steadiness or fluctuation, adequateness or inadequateness
of the markets on which he must depend, for the vent of the
surplus which may be produced by his labor; and that such
surplus, in the ordinary course of things, will be greater or less
in the same proportion.” Considering how rapidly the popu¬
lation was increasing and new settlements were being formed,
with the consequent increase in agricultural produce, he pointed
out that a market for the surplus was a matter of first impor¬
tance, and that, with the economic and political ideas of the
times as affecting international trade, a domestic market was
greatly to be preferred to a foreign one. Such a market, he
clearly foresaw, could be secured only by building up manu¬
factures and by the creation of a class divorced from the soil,
who would consume the products of the farmer.2

1 W. P. Cutler, Manasseh Cutler , (Cincinnati, 1888), vol. I, pp. 124 ff.

2 American State Papers , Finance , vol. I, p. 127.

196 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

There were several factors, however, tending to retard
the growth of manufactures after the abnormal requirements
and conditions of the war had passed. Skilled workmen were
scarce; the technique of England was far ahead of that in
America ; machinery was difficult to obtain and there was
much ignorance as to its use; raw materials were often high-
priced; the dictates of fashion called for foreign materials in
many cases; and English competition was keen. It has often
been stated that high wages were another deterrent, but this
is questionable. George Cabot wrote to Hamilton that,
although the wages of farm labor were much higher in America
than in England and artisans received slightly higher wages
than agriculturists, yet the artisans did not ask so much as
similar workmen in the old country, where the discrepancy
between the two classes was much greater.1

The other adverse factors come out frequently in the current
discussions. Elisha Colt, writing of the attempt to establish
a “Woolen Manufacture” at Hartford, said that when the pro¬
moters began they were “not only totally unacquainted with
the various parts or subdivisions of the Labour; but equally
destitute of every kind of Machinery and Labourers for exe¬
cuting such a project.” They managed to collect a number of
men, chiefly soldiers who had deserted from the British army
during the war and remained in the country. These had some
knowledge of the work, but none of them knew very much and
their experimenting cost the company dear. In addition, he
said, they had had to struggle with every sort of embarrass¬
ment attending the setting up of a new business, “either from
the Ignorance, the Knavery or the fickleness of the Workmen ;
the high price of materials ; the smallness of our Capital ; and
the prejudices of the Community against home made cloths,
and the interested views and Jealousy of the British Factors.” 2

In New Haven a button factory had been started and reached
the point where it was turning out two hundred different sorts,
when the English manufacturers sent over large quantities at

1 H. C. Lodge, Life and Letters of George Cabot , (Boston, 1877), p. 47.

2 Letter of Elisha Colt to John Chester, Hartford, Aug. 20, 1791. Hamilton Papers,
Mss., Library of Congress.

THE ECONOMIC STRUCTURE, 1790-1800 197

one third less than the accustomed price, in order to stifle this
infant competition.1 One of the hat-making plants at Danbury
complained of the difficulty of securing furs and the high
prices of the raw material, due to the fact that almost the
whole fur trade was engrossed by one person in New York,
who shipped all furs to England so that the Danbury hatters
had to purchase them after being shipped back.2 Another
trouble, reported by a traveler, was that New England manu¬
facturers invariably invested too much money in buildings and
machinery, resulting in heavy mortgages on the property.3
There were many paper mills, but the complaint was made
that the oldest of these, those at Milton, had “fallen into the
common error of our Manufactories, to get a good name, and
not to labour to keep it, turning off their articles.” 4

Nevertheless, a beginning was being made, and, in spite of
the increase in population, the importation of foreign manu¬
factured goods had decreased by one half, due mainly to home
production, though a large part of this was carried on in the
households.5 In 1791 about ten thousand dozen of cotton and
wool cards were being turned out in Massachusetts, of which
two thirds were exported to other states, the business employ¬
ing about twenty-five thousand persons, mostly women and
children. One of the most important attempts to establish a
new industry was made in Rhode Island through the combined
efforts of Samuel Slater, an Englishman, and the Providence
firm of Almy & Brown. In spite of the fact that there were
stringent laws in England against the emigration of skilled work¬
men or the exporting of any models or drawings of machinery,

1 Letter of J. & J. Mix to John Chester, New Haven, Sept. 30, 1791. Hamilton
Papers, Mss., ibid.

2 Letter of O. Burr to John Chester, Danbury, Sept. 12, 1791. Hamilton Papers,
Mss., ibid.

3 Henry Wansey, Journal of an Excursion to the United States , i794-> (Salisbury,
1796), p. 85.

4 Diary of William Bentley , vol. I, p. 246.

6 [Tench Coxe] A brief Examination of Lord Sheffield's Observations , (Philadelphia,
1791), p. 1 17. Cf. letter of Nathaniel Gorham to Alexander Hamilton, Boston, Oct. 13,
1791. Gorham says that the European imports into Massachusetts had declined fifty
percent in twenty years; that Connecticut had transferred its trade to New York; but
that this was not enough to account for the decline, and that the reason must be sought
in the increase of domestic manufactures. Hamilton Papers, Mss., Ibid.

198 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

Slater, in furtherance of his own career, determined to acquire
such knowledge of the Arkwright system of cotton-spinning
as would enable him to reproduce it from memory in America.
He finally left England, disguised as a farm hand, and after a
short stay in New York made arrangements with Moses Brown
to establish a mill at Providence. The enterprise was success¬
ful, the first cotton thread made either in Europe or America
being manufactured there in I793-1

With the type of mill introduced by Slater new problems
arose in connection with labor, of which we shall have more to
say in later chapters. It had been expected that manufactur¬
ing would make a market by giving work to persons divorced
from the soil, but the first nine operatives employed by Slater
were children, seven boys and two girls, all from seven to twelve
years of age. Two years later he established a Sunday School
for them, and it has been claimed that he treated them well.2
In 1801 the number of children employed in the cotton mill
at Pawtucket was over one hundred, ranging from four to ten
years of age. Josiah Quincy, who visited the plant, said that
the superintendent was eloquent on the usefulness of such a
business in employing so many children of the poor. “But an
eloquence was exerted on the other side of the question,’'
Quincy adds, “more commanding than his, which called us to
pity these little creatures, plying in a contracted room, among
flyers and coggs, at an age when nature requires for them air,
space and sports. There was an air of dull dejection on the
countenances of all of them.” 3

The first tariff act of the Federal government, that of 1789,
was intended to be partly protective in its effect, but was of
comparatively little influence.4 The early legislation of the
new state was directed to the encouragement of trade rather
than manufactures, as the commercial and trading elements
dominated the economic life of the country until after the

1 W. R. Bagnall, Samuel Slater and the Early Development of the Cotton Manufacture
in the United States , (Middletown, 1890), pp. 28 ff.y 50.

2 Ibid., pp. 49/.; G. S. White, Memoir of Samuel Slater , (Philadelphia, 1836), p. 117.

3 “Account of Journey of Josiah Quincy in 1801,” Mass. Hist. Soc., Proceedings ,
Ser. II, vol. IV, p. 124.

4 F. W. Taussig, The Tariff History of the United States , (New York, 1914), p. 14.

THE ECONOMIC STRUCTURE, 1790-1800 199

beginning of the new century. The adoption of the Constitu¬
tion and the formation of the Union marked the beginning of a
new era in commerce for all New England. Trade, it is true,
had begun to improve in 1787, and the two years of Shays’s
Rebellion covered its lowest ebb. In 1788 Humphreys, writ¬
ing to Jefferson, noted that the balance of exchange had actu¬
ally turned in favor of Massachusetts, and that the East India
trade had contributed not a little to that result.1 Many articles
began to appear in the papers regarding expanding commerce
and the increase in shipbuilding.2

The old triangular trade of Europe, the West Indies, and
New England was not indeed regained, and as the West India
trade did not increase materially from 1786, it was necessary
to find new routes and markets.3 At the end of 1786 the West
India merchants presented a memorial to Parliament, com¬
plaining of the increased cost and the precariousness of their
supplies on account of the exclusion of American carriers.4
Their contention was well founded, if we may accept the
figures given by a contemporary American statistician, accord¬
ing to whom oak staves shipped from the United States to the
British islands cost there from $24 to $31 as against prices for
the same articles shipped to the French islands of $12 to $16;
pine boards were from $24 to $30 for the British against $>n to
$16 for the French; and so with an extended list of articles.5
Parliament, however, turned a deaf ear, and it was claimed
in the House of Commons that the regulations had increased
British shipping by seven hundred vessels and four thousand
seamen.6

New England merchants, meanwhile, had tapped a new
source of wealth. In 1784 the New York ship Empress of
China, with Major Samuel Shaw of Boston as one of the joint
supercargoes, reached the country for which she had been

1 Humphreys, David Humphreys , vol. I, p. 440.

2 Quoted by Morse, Federalist Party, p. 61 note.

3 E. Charming, History of the United States , (New York, 1916), vol. Ill, pp. 414, 422.

4 “Memorial of the General Meeting of the West India Planters,” The Political
Magazine , (London, 1787), pp. 15/.

5 Coxe, Brief Examination , pp. 100 ff.

6 Parliamentary Register, vol. XXI, p. 117.

200

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

named.1 The year before, the little fifty-five-ton sloop Harriet,
of Hingham, had started on the same voyage, but meeting
some British East Indiamen at the Cape of Good Hope had
made a profitable deal there and returned. Shaw, after coming
home from his first trip, went back to Canton in 1786 and
established the first American mercantile house in China.2
In May 1787 the Salem vessel The Grand Turk arrived safe in
port from the Far East, bringing enormous profit to her owner.
Some months later John Brown of Providence sent the General
Washington to the East Indies, the vessel returning a year and
a half later with a cargo valued at approximately $100, 000. 3
The same year saw also the beginning of the voyage of the
Columbia, which ended after three years in the summer of 1790,
when the ship returned after having been the first to fly the
American flag in circling the globe. It was this ship that in
the course of its voyage opened up the fur trade of the North¬
west coast at Nootka Sound, which was to provide the Boston
merchants with goods to be exchanged for the riches of China.4

Meanwhile, fourteen other vessels, of which four belonged
to Elias Haskett Derby of Salem, had preceded the Columbia to
Canton, bringing home silks, chinaware, and tea, and by 1792
the “ Boston-Northwest-Canton-Boston ” route was fairly
well established.5 The Oriental trade was divided between
Boston and Salem, the merchants of the former for the most
part sending their ships westward around the Horn to China,
whereas those of the latter sailed eastward around the Cape of
Good Hope to the East Indies.

For the years 1785 and 1786 the shipping lists show scarcely
any vessels other than those in the American coasting trade,
with occasional entries from the West Indies,6 but by 1790 the

1 Thomas Randall of New York was the other supercargo, although not mentioned
in New England accounts of the voyage. Some years later Randall wrote a long letter
concerning it to Alexander Hamilton. Letter dated Aug. 14, 1791. Hamilton Papers,
Mss., Library of Congress.

2 Morison, Maritime History , pp. 44 /.

3 G. S. Kimball, The East-India Trade of Providence from 1787 to 1807 , (Brown Uni¬
versity, 1896), p. 10.

4 Morison, op. cit ., pp. 45 ff.

6 Ibid., p. 50.

6 Boston Gazette for those years, passim.

Ship Hazard of Salem

From the original in the Peabody Museum

-

.

'

THE ECONOMIC STRUCTURE, 1790-1800 201

coming change was conspicuously manifest. In twenty days
in the early summer of that year the customs books at Salem
show not only such familiar entries as brigs and schooners from
Cadiz, Port-au-Prince, and Martinico, with cargoes valued at
$114, $56, and $101, but the harbingers of new wealth in the
brig William-and-Henry from Canton, with a cargo of nearly
$10,000, and the ships Lighthorse and Astrea from the same
port with cargoes of $16,000 and $27,ooo.1 By 1805-06 the
American imports at Canton had risen to $5,000,000. The
pepper trade with the Malay Archipelago was also opened up
and America, which had exported only 492 pounds of that spice
in 1791, became, largely through Salem, the world market by
1805, with exports of over seven and a half million pounds.2

The decline in New England commerce during the Revolu¬
tion and down to the Federal period is indicated by the fact
that, whereas in 1772 one hundred and twenty-three vessels
were built, only eleven keels were laid in 1789.3 In that year,
however, the Federal government in a tariff act gave protec¬
tion to American shipping in competition with foreign carriers,
and the proportion of American vessels in the foreign trade
rose from seventeen and one-half per cent at that time to ninety-
four per cent in 1796, the tonnage engaged rising from 123,000
to 576, ooo.4 In this gain New England, as the chief shipping
section of the country, shared to the full. Federal aid was
extended not only to the merchant marine but to the New
England fisheries as well. Charles C. Pinckney of South Caro¬
lina had declared that in the Revolution “the eastern states
had lost everything but their country and freedom,” and that
the South was called upon by “every tie of justice, friendship
and humanity, to relieve their distress.”5 From 1789 onward
a series of Acts were passed giving bounties or otherwise encour¬
aging the fishermen, and the industry slowly recovered.

It was the riches from the Far East, however, rather than from
the fishing banks, that reestablished the maritime supremacy

1 Morison, op. cit ., p. 82.

2 Ibid ., p. 91.

3 Report of the Lords of the Committee of Privy Council , Jan. 28 , 1791 y p. 44.

4 W. W. Bates, American Marine , (Boston, 1895), pp. 96/.

5 Quoted by McFarland, New England Fisheries , p. 132.

202

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

of Massachusetts. Fabulous wealth for those days flowed
in from ventures sent thither, and fortunes were made and
families founded in this new trade, to which the Yankee mer¬
chants had been driven by the restrictive West Indian policy
of the British government. Elias Haskett Derby, who died in
1799, left an estate of a million and a half. Israel Thorndike of
Beverly and Simon Forrester of Salem both left about the same,
while William Gray had accumulated three millions a few
years later.1 In Boston and Salem and Newburyport beautiful
houses, many of them to-day constituting the finest examples
of domestic architecture in America, were built to accommodate
this new class of mercantile magnates. Few of their owners
represented old families. Some had started as laborers or
sailors, and many were only one generation from such an origin ;
but they lived lavishly and somehow managed to display most
excellent taste in housing and furniture. Not all of the new-
rich of this period came to fit into their new places so admirably.

The decade was one of great financial activity, of a broaden¬
ing of the investment field, and in its earlier years of a specu¬
lation that culminated in 1792. With the assumption of the
state debts and the refunding of the Continental debt, a large
advance occurred in the prices of all sorts of governmental
obligations, those of the Federal securities quadrupling between
October 1789 and December 1791. 2 In 1789 the Massachusetts
Gazette began to print security quotations regularly. The
stockbroker appeared as a distinct type of business man, and
trading on margin and other elements in our modern markets
came into vogue. The formation of banks both afforded a
new vehicle for speculation and furnished liquid funds for its
furtherance. The incorporation of the Massachusetts Bank
in 1794 was followed by the Providence Bank in 1791 and five
others in the year after.3 The public press and private letters

1 Morison, Maritime History , p. 119.

2 Davis, American Corporations , vol. I, p. 195. The state debts in New England
were approximately $300,000 in New Hampshire; $5,226,000 in Massachusetts;
$510,000 in Rhode Island; and $1,951,000 in Connecticut. Nevins, American States ,
p. 542. When the Federal government assumed the greater part of these, it greatly
strengthened the credit of the individual states.

3 They were located at Portsmouth, Hartford, New London, New Haven, and Bos¬
ton. Davis, op. cit ., vol. II, p. 333.

THE ECONOMIC STRUCTURE, 1790-1800 203

of the day all testify to the universal participation in the specu¬
lative mania that centred at New York but spread all over the
country districts of New England in the early years of the
decade.

A correspondent at Worcester wrote to the Norwich Packet
that “as fast as one bubble of speculation breaks another is
blown up, — we are in the high road of becoming the greatest
sharpers in the universe, — lottery bubbles, bank and tontine
bubbles, — and many others, the rage of the present day, are
most absurdly anti-republican, — they strike at the roots of
industry and economy.” 1

With the rapid fortunes made in the rise of securities, land,
and other commodities, a new class arose to join the war-rich
of the decade before and the somewhat aloof magnates of the
Massachusetts coast. There was much current comment on
these newcomers, and bitter feeling on the part of the less
fortunate portion of the community. Connecticut had the
deserved nickname of “the land of steady habits,” yet the
speculation was as wild there as elsewhere. One paper noted
with regret that “the professors of honest and useful occupa¬
tions [were] made the butt of ridicule to the imaginary Noblesse
of yesterday'' ; and Oliver Wolcott wrote from Litchfield of the
“pretty pungent dislike” with which was viewed “the unri¬
valled opulence of certain people, of low cunning and ostenta¬
tious display of grandeur” in the larger towns.2 The crash
came in 1792 and innumerable smaller folk were involved in
the ruin of the more spectacular figures such as Colonel Duer
of New York.

In a New England that was rapidly altering, all these eco¬
nomic factors became closely related to European affairs and
to politics and religion at home. These relations will form
the subject of the next chapter.

1 Norwich Packet , March 15, 1792.

2 Norwich Packet , April 4, 1792; Gibbs, Administrations of Washington and Adams ,
vol. I, p. 74.

CHAPTER IX

THE REVOLUTION EXTENDED

The European War — Effect on Domestic Politics — Enthusi¬
asm for France — New England Federalism — Democratic Clubs

— Jay's Treaty — Dominating Political Groups — Clergy in
Politics — Growth of Religious Dissent — Rise of the Democrats

— Talk of Disunion — Beginning of Irish Immigration

For over two hundred and fifty years the American colonies
had formed an integral part of the complex European system
of states and their dependencies. Not only had they been
economically and politically dependent upon England, but
whenever the smouldering hostility between that country and
France had flashed into the flames of open war they had inevi¬
tably been drawn in as active participants. When indepen¬
dence was won, it was felt that a new era had opened and that
America should keep out of entanglements with European
affairs — a feeling to which Washington gave expression in his
Farewell Address. Independence, however, had been merely
political. Americans, both mentally and economically, were
still enmeshed in the European system in a thousand ways. It
must be remembered that that system embraced practically
the entire world with which America was in relations of any
sort until the China trade was opened. If New England vessels
went to South America, there they found Spain ; if to the East
Indies, there was Holland; the West Indies were Swedish,
Danish, French, or English; if traders or settlers went over¬
land north to Canada or west of the Lakes and the Alleghanies,
there were British garrisons ; if they went south to Florida,
there again was Spain. Indeed, it may almost be said that in

*&fpaari&

Salem Ships Hercules and Australia

From originals in the Peabody Museum

N

*

(

THE REVOLUTION EXTENDED

205

the world of ideas, of political relations, and of trade, the infant
nation on the Atlantic seaboard was entirely surrounded by
the all-embracing European system.

By 17 93 the war in Europe, which had followed upon the
Revolution in France, had become general, involving not only
that country but England, Holland, and Spain, and the inter¬
ests of New Englanders were deeply divided between the two
leading antagonists. The West Indies, as we have stated,
were but parts of Europe as far as commercial policy was con¬
cerned, and we have already spoken of England’s regulations
covering American trade with her possessions there. The
French had shown no more willingness to allow free trade than
had the English, but the great bulk of the commerce had gone
to the French islands, over 101,000 out of 167,000 tons of ship¬
ping entering America from the West Indies in 1790 being
from French ports.1

When war was declared between England and France in
1793, the French opened the ports of the West Indies to neu¬
trals, owing to economic necessity. England, however, soon
undertook the conquest of the islands and issued orders to cap¬
ture any American or other neutral vessels trading with them.
In order herself to gain benefit by the neutral trade, she relaxed
to some extent the regulations covering that with her own
islands. The strain of war, with the need of largely increasing
the personnel of her navy, made her willing to decrease her
commerce in order to release merchantmen for naval service.
It was also imperative that no British seaman should escape
that service by serving on foreign vessels, and consequently
wherever her officers found British seamen on captured Ameri¬
can vessels they were seized, and thus to the captures of vessels
was added impressment of their crews, to serve as legitimate
grievances of American merchants.

On May 9, the French government issued its decree to the
effect that neutral vessels under certain conditions might be
seized by French ships of war or privateers and carried into

1 A. T. Mahan, Sea Power in Its Relations to the War of 1812^ (Boston, 1905), vol. I,
p. 85. In 1795 the imports into America from the British West Indies were $6, 426, 091,
and from the French islands $15,751,758. T. Pitkin, Statistical View of the Commerce
of the United States , (New York, 1817), p. 251.

2o6

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

French ports, and the seizures thus permitted began at once.
Both governments continued from then until the end of the
war in 1801 to harass American commerce by a series of orders
or decrees, and by seizures which were outside the limits of
international law as then established, and which had profound
effect on American domestic politics. Meanwhile, Washington
had issued his Proclamation of Neutrality on April 22, 1793.
The country, however, was in a ferment. Both France and
England were violating our rights, but Americans overlooked
the acts of one or the other as their sympathies were engaged
in favor of English or of French.

But it was not alone from the great European Powers that
Americans suffered humiliation and spoliation. They were
helpless even before the depredations of the Algerine pirates
in the Mediterranean, and American vessels scarcely dared
venture into those waters save under the protection of the Por¬
tuguese navy.1 Although John Adams and Gouverneur Morris
preached the need for a small naval force of our own, and al¬
though in the opinion of the ablest naval critic of the present
day such a force would have been sufficient to make us respected
and would have prevented the War of 1812, it was felt that the
finances of the government did not permit of it.2 Diplomacy
was resorted to, and John Jay was dispatched to England in
1794 to settle the long outstanding differences left since the
Peace of 1783 and the new questions which had arisen.3 Jay
did not succeed in protecting American seamen from impress¬
ment, nor in asserting the doctrine of free ships, free goods;
whereas he yielded to the British Admiralty’s doctrine of con¬
traband and accepted, in practice though not in principle, the
P,ule of 1756.4 On the other hand, he did procure some con-

1 Mahan, Sea Power in the W ar of 1812 , vol. I, pp. 73 ff. ; G. W. Allen, Our Navy and
the Barbary Corsairs , (Boston, 1905), p. 15.

2 Mahan, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 71 ff. Henry Adams took the opposite stand in writing
in 1879 of Gallatin, but his arguments must fall before Mahan’s superior knowledge.
Life of Albert Gallatin , (Philadelphia, 1879), p. 171.

3 S. F. Bemis has made a definitive study of the whole negotiation in Jay's Treaty ,
(New York, 1923).

4 Bemis, op. cit., pp. 269 ff. In brief, the Rule of 1756 was that “neutrals would not
be permitted to engage in time of war in a trade from which they were excluded in time
of peace.” J. B. Moore, A Digest of International Law, (Washington, 1906), vol. VII,
P- 383-

THE REVOLUTION EXTENDED

207

cessions, and the fact that England was at last willing to sign
any commercial treaty at all with the United States in the
dangerous and unstable condition in which their nationality
then stood, was a matter “of far greater import than the tech¬
nical recognition of independence forced from George IIL,, 1

Friction with England continued in spite of the treaty, but
before the end of the decade the depredations of France in¬
creased so greatly as to involve the United States in what was
virtually unacknowledged war with that country. Decree
had followed decree, and the spoliations and maltreatment of
our vessels, cargoes, and crews had become unbearable by
1798.1 2 Congress acted at last, and in April of that year organ¬
ized the Navy Department and increased the army. Among
other measures, an Act was passed authorizing American mer¬
chant vessels to arm and to repel by force any attack upon
them by the French, as well as to recapture any American ships
that might have been taken. War was not declared, but com¬
mercial intercourse was declared suspended. From that time
until the end of the European war there were many conflicts,
not only between our merchant vessels and the French but
between the armed naval vessels of both countries. After this
very brief and inadequate account of what was an extremely
complex international situation, we must turn to consider the
effects of these developments upon the political and social
conditions in New England.

In discussing the adoption of the Federal Constitution we
noted at some length the division into parties that occurred
at that time — or if the word “parties” connotes too much of
organization and machinery in the modern sense, the two
groups of conflicting opinion into which men had divided. To
a great extent we found this division to have been an economic
cleavage between those whose financial interests demanded a
strong central government and those who feared such a govern¬
ment, or, in general, between the mercantile elements and the
agrarian elements, between the rich and the poor.3 Until

1 Bemis, op. cit ., p. 270.

2 G. W. Allen, Our Naval War with France , (Boston, 1909), pp. 29 f.

3 Vide supra , chap. vii.

208

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

comparatively recently it had always been considered that the
parties formed at that time were continuing and that the Fed¬
eralists and Republicans whom we have now to discuss were
the successors of those who were in favor or opposed to the
adoption of the Constitution. This has now been denied by
some, but the older view appears to be the more correct one,
based upon both contemporary evidence and the facts of human
nature.1 It is true that there was no party machinery and,
judging by the small numbers throughout all New England who
voted as compared with those entitled to do so, that there was
but slight interest in contesting elections.2

Those among the people, however, who had voted for the
Constitution had had very definite reasons for doing so. They
wished to protect their financial interests and to provide a curb
for what they considered the dangerously mobbish or demo¬
cratic elements, such as had come to the surface to spread terror
and threaten the state in Shays’s Rebellion. When the new
government had been formed, this same group wished to see
policies pursued such as that exemplified by Hamilton, which
would continue to secure these objects. Made up of most of
the men of wealth in all the New England states, bound to¬
gether by business, social, and family ties, this general group,
or Federal party, knew what they wanted, and the leaders
were in sufficiently close touch with one another to bring about
concerted action for securing their objects. On the other
hand, those elements who had been opposed to the Constitu¬
tion had no such cohesive forces among them. They belonged
for the most part to the poorer part of the population ; lived
scattered in the country rather than in cities ; had no powerful
group of leaders in close touch with one another; lacked means
of communication ; and their wishes were negative rather than
positive. They did not want tariffs or shipping subsidies or
what-not. They wanted to be let alone and have the govern¬
ment impinge upon them as little as possible — a much less

1 Cf. C. A. Beard, Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy , (New York, 1915),
pp. 10 ff.

2 W. A. Robinson, Jeffersonian Democracy in New England , (YaleUniv. Press, 1916),
PP- 2/-

THE REVOLUTION EXTENDED

209

tangible object to work for. They were an unorganized col¬
lection of elements in opposition. The term “Republican,”
said the Columbian Centinel in 1792, has “so often been
applied ... to Anti-Federalists, Insurgents, State Dema¬
gogues and professed enemies to the union of our common
country, that it is difficult to ascertain its precise meaning.”1
Although the remark was made by a political opponent, it
contained much truth. Under the strong pressure of the in¬
ternational situation, these two more or less inchoate groups
were each to be firmly welded into an organized political
party.

Even in New England, where under the lead of Samuel
Adams the propaganda of Revolutionary days had been most
rabid and bitter, the feeling of hostility toward England as the
former enemy had softened much more rapidly than might
have been expected. In that land, which has always loved
public anniversaries, it is enlightening to read in Dr. Bentley’s
Diary for 1792 on the provocative nineteenth of April that
“the recollections of the events of this day [are] almost lost.
Few observed to recall it.” 2 Apart from sentiment, however,
the most influential group in New England, the merchants, who
were also the leaders of the Federalist party, were bound by
the closest of ties to London. Not only did the imports from
England after independence continue greatly to exceed those
from any other country, but the credit extended by English
bankers to New England merchants was absolutely essential
to the carrying on of their business with almost any part of
the world, even the newly developing Northwest-Coast-China
trade. Bills on London were good virtually anywhere, whereas
those on American banks were not. Supercargoes could sell
merchandise at any port where a favorable market offered,
receive London bills, and use them elsewhere to purchase other
goods wherever most desirable. Business relations with France
had grown closer than before independence from England was
won, but after 1792 these became dangerously speculative,

1 Quoted by Robinson, Jeffersonian Democracy , p. 7.

2 W. Bentley, Diary , vol. I, p. 361. He adds that “there was a sermon at Lexing¬
ton for several years, but it has long since ceased.”

210

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

and the more conservative merchants were driven to almost
complete dependence upon their London connections.1

The New England merchants who had worked so hard for
the adoption of the Constitution had been well rewarded dur¬
ing the first few years of the new government. When the
first senators were chosen in Massachusetts, Caleb Strong of
Northampton was selected as one, to placate the western coun¬
ties, but as to the other it seems to have been admitted, as
James Sullivan said, that “the merchants made the Constitu¬
tion and they should name the candidate.” 2 Various Acts
regarding the fisheries, duties, shipping, and warehouses, passed
during the first two administrations, all redounded greatly to
the benefit of the merchants. Many of these Acts were sec¬
tional measures, which were of advantage to the North rather
than the South, and when the depredations of England on
American commerce began, a new rift appeared between the
feelings of the two parts of the nation. Whereas in New
England the richer element was in favor of England for the
reasons noted above, in the South the debts which the planters
had owed to English bankers before the Revolution and which
had never been paid exerted an influence in the opposite direc¬
tion. A fortnight after Washington’s proclamation of neu¬
trality Oliver Wolcott wrote from Connecticut that he did not
believe that there were fifty persons in all New England who
would not support the government, and that if the Southerners
were ever inclined to dissolve the Union they would have to
count on the Potomac as the dividing line.3 A little later
Timothy Dwight wrote that New England absolutely would
not enter into a war with England, and that ninety-nine in a
hundred there would sooner separate from the Union.4

These statements, which were not true even of New England,
could by no means be applied to the country at large. In
March of the next year, even after the notorious actions of
Genet, the French representative in the United States, had

1 Morison, Maritime History , p. 169.

2 Quoted by Morison, ibid., p. 164.

3 Gibbs, Administrations of Washington and Adams , vol. I, p. 102.

4 Ibid., p. 107.

THE REVOLUTION EXTENDED

21 1

cooled the ardor of many Francophiles, Fisher Ames wrote
from Congress that he “would not justify the insolence and
injustice of the English : they are not to be justified; but our
fury for the French, and against the English, is more natural
than salutary. France has stopped more than an hundred
sail of our vessels at Bordeaux. We sit still; we say nothing;
we affect to depend on their justice ; we make excuses. Eng¬
land stops our vessels with provoking insolence ; we are in a
rage.” He went on to say truly that this discrimination was
in no wise deserved by the French.1

Not only had France been our ally in the War for Inde¬
pendence, but her own revolution had been watched with the
deepest interest and sympathy by the majority of Americans.
When the French Republic was proclaimed a thrill of joy ran
through all America, and at the end of 1792 and the beginning
of 1793 celebrations took place everywhere to signalize the
defeat of the Allies. A great civic festival was held in Boston,
and demonstrations occurred throughout the towns of New
England.2 Sympathy with France became a veritable frenzy
on the part of a large section of the American public, not to be
chilled by any acts of the new government until — and then
only partly — the Revolution entered upon its most bloody
and irreligious phase at the end of the decade.

The Americans are a sentimental people, but so violent did
the pro-French feeling become that its foundation must be
looked for beyond the mere sentiment for a former ally or a
disinterested rejoicing over the apparent spread of democratic
ideas. We have had occasion, time and again, in the three
volumes which comprise this history of New England, to point
out the evidences of class feeling and the bitterness of economic
and social clashes in what used to be considered a homogeneous
social structure. We have touched upon the very large body
of discontent which was left over after our own Revolution.
We have seen the strong opposition that was felt against the
adoption of the Constitution. That instrument had been

1 Works , vol. I, p. 139.

2 C. D. Hazen, Contemporary American Opinion of the French Revolution , (Johns
Hopkins Univ. Studies, 1897), pp. 164^.

■212

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

adopted, however wisely, as a result of a strong reaction on
the part of the most conservative elements against the democ¬
racy which had been preached to the people during the war with
England. That firm hands were needed to guide the new Ship
of State is unquestionable, but this did not make it any more
palatable to many of the “common people” and others who
had fought for the “rights of man,” when they found that their
government had been organized in the interests of the mer¬
chants and the “rights of property.” As we saw above, it has
been claimed that the real struggle over adoption in Massa¬
chusetts was the conflict between those who believed in democ¬
racy and those who believed in John Adams’s doctrine of the
right of the well-born to govern.

There may be said to have been two strong feelings among
the stubborn citizens of New England of that day, one or the
other being shared by almost every man. One was the feeling
that he was just as good as anyone else. The other was that
he was a good deal better. The first may be considered at the
bottom of Republican doctrine and the second of Federalist.
The national leader of the Federalists was Alexander Hamilton,
but the dominating group, not only in New England but in
the nation, was the Essex Junto which we have already men¬
tioned. The doctrines of New England Federalism were based
solely on the opinions, wishes, and prejudices of George Cabot,
Timothy Pickering, Fisher Ames, Theophilus Parsons, John
Lowell, Jr., and a few others associated with them, all lawyers
and merchants of Essex County. All of these men had the
utmost contempt, and at times dread, of all such people —
naturally the great majority of the state — as were outside the
charmed circle of the rich or well-born. In the latter alone
did the members of the Junto conceive that wisdom or even
virtue could lie. In their private correspondence or public
utterances it is always the rich about whom all virtue centres.
We find constantly such expressions as the- “wise, rich, and
good,” the “rich and able,” the “wise and rich,” or the “wise,
the good, and the rich.” 1

Their hatred of democracy exceeded even that felt by John

1 Ames, Works , vol. I, pp. 310/., 316.

THE REVOLUTION EXTENDED

213

Winthrop or John Cotton. “Democracy is a troubled spirit,
fated never to rest, and whose dreams if it sleeps, present only
visions of hell,” wrote Ames to Timothy Dwight.1 “It has
never happened in the world, and it never will,” he wrote again
some years later, “that a democracy has been kept out of the
control of the fiercest and most turbulent spirits in the society ;
they will breathe into it all their own fury, and make it sub¬
servient to the worst designs of the worst men.” 2 Finally,
almost in the words of Winthrop in 1630, he asked, “Ought we
not to consider democracy as the worst of all governments, or
if there be a worse, as the certain forerunner of that ?” 3 They
had little respect for that vaunted New England institution,
the town meeting, and objected to other meetings for the
expression of public opinion. “Take the people of any one
place, the more general their meeting,” wrote Pickering, “the
greater will be the proportion of members incompetent to judge
of the subject discussed.” He admitted that in small towns the
people might understand their own petty local affairs, but in
the larger ones, such as New York or Philadelphia, he declared
that he “never knew a large meeting of the citizens that was
other than a mob.” 4 “Where is the boasted advantage of a
representation system over the turbulent mobocracy of
Athens,” asked Cabot, “if the resort to popular meetings is
necessary ?” 5

This was far removed from the doctrines on which the leaders
had fed that same “mobocracy” when they had had to call its
members from their plows and firesides on thousands of New
England farms in the years of sanguinary struggle. It is true
that the poorer people still to a great extent looked up to the
leading families of their small communities and to the clergy
for political guidance, but a vision had been given them at the
time of the Revolution of a larger life in which they were to
share, and here and there all through the land individuals felt
that they had been defrauded of the fruits for which they had

1 Ibid., vol. I, p. 337.

2 Ibid., vol. II, p. 356.

3 Ibid., vol. II, p. 364.

4 Pickering, Timothy Pickering, vol. Ill, p. 182.

6 Lodge, Cabot, p. 85.

214

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

fought. It was too obvious, moreover, that many of the new-
rich, fattened on war contracts or speculation in public funds,
were not the sole founts of wisdom and virtue in their com¬
munities. Discontent may not have been organized or vocal
to any great extent in 1790, but that it was fermenting under
the surface there can be little doubt.

Upon this situation, the news of the French Revolution, of
the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of a
republic, wrought a sudden and marvelous effect. Once more
the heavens had opened and a vision had been vouchsafed to
the common man. Here was an opportunity not for sullen
and dumb discontent but for open and unbounded rejoicing.
Enthusiasm for everything French suddenly knew no bounds.
Not only were the festivals and celebrations spoken of above
held in many New England towns, but French fashions, French
modes of speaking, French holidays, and French ideas became
all the mode among her sympathizers. Even street names in
Boston were altered and Royal Exchange Alley became Equal¬
ity Lane.1

Suddenly, all over the country, this enthusiasm took more
tangible — and what was considered by some an extremely
ominous — form in the shape of secret societies modeled on
the Jacobin Clubs of Paris. Many of these societies were
.called “Democratic” Clubs, a word, incidentally, which was
introduced from France at this time. In the “Declaration”
sent out by the one formed in Boston it was stated, after noting
that under the American Constitution citizens had the “right
in an orderly and peaceable manner to assemble and consult
upon the public good,” that the members had agreed to meet
and converse together “for the purpose of gaining and com¬
municating information on the affairs of their country; to
express with decency and firmness, their sentiments respecting
the measures adopted by their Delegates, and to offer their
opinions with candor on matters of political concernment.” 2

In some cases, as in that of the society in Chittenden County,
Vermont, hatred of England was openly avowed. Among
other places where the clubs were formed were Bennington,

1 Hazen, Contemporary American Opinion , p. 216. 2 Ibid. , pp. 193/.

THE REVOLUTION EXTENDED

215

Addison, Rutland, and Cumberland counties, Vermont, and
Portland, Maine, and it is probable there were others elsewhere.
In any case, the effect of their organization was far-reaching.
Wherever they were formed they threw themselves into the
local political situation with extraordinary vigor. In Boston
in the autumn of 1794 the election for members of the state
legislature was hotly contested. Dr. Charles Jarvis, who had
always supported Republican measures, was nominated against
the redoubtable Fisher Ames, who wrote of the members of the
new Club who were actively campaigning, that “they poison
every spring ; they whisper to every gale ; they are everywhere,
always acting like Old Nick and his imps. . . . They will be
busy as Macbeth’s witches at the election, and all agree the
event is very doubtful.” 1

f Ames finally retained his seat, but this springing of the
despised democracy into organized action instilled both hate
and fear into the hearts of the Federalists and the “rich and
good.” Every diabolical motive possible was attributed to
members of the Clubs. At last, in a speech before Congress,
Washington attacked them as secret and “self-created socie¬
ties,” connecting them with the recent Whiskey Rebellion in
Pennsylvania and heartily condemning them. It was pointed
out by their defenders that they were no more “self-created”
than the Order of the Cincinnati; but Washington’s authority
was too great with the country at large to be withstood and the
clubs began to wither under his censure. By March 1795,
Wolcott wrote from Connecticut that he trusted “ the demoni¬
acal societies” were sinking into contempt.2

The extremists in democracy, however, had made themselves
heard, and a new rancor entered into party strife. Rhode
Island and New Hampshire were little affected as yet, but the
withdrawal from public life of Governor Samuel Adams in
Massachusetts and the death of Governor Chittenden in
Vermont opened the way for more violent contests. Samuel
Dexter, one of the ablest Federalists in Massachusetts, was

1 Works, vol. I, p. 148. Cf. Robinson, Jeffersonian Democracy , pp. 10 ff.; Morse,
Federalist Party , pp. 148 /.

2 Gibbs, Administrations of Washington and Adams , vol. I, p. 179.

n6

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

defeated by Joseph Varnum in 1795 for the legislature, and in
Vermont the following year, that extraordinary Irishman,
Matthew Lyon, was elected to Congress as a Democrat.1 Dr.
Bentley noted in his Diary that electioneering was going on
actively in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, even extending
in Boston to petty town-officers, and that this was “the Com¬
mencement of a new Career.” 2

Just at the time of the suppression of the Democratic Clubs
there came another opportunity for democratic sentiment to
express itself with violence over a national event. The Demo¬
crats, having allied themselves in sympathy to France, were
naturally opposed to England, and when the terms of Jay’s
apparently humiliating treaty with that country were made
public a howl of rage went up from their ranks. In fact, not
a few of the merchants and Federalists were inclined at first
to join in the condemnation themselves, but for the most part
these were soon made to see how subtly linked were the inter¬
ests of the shipping group to the other groups of capitalists
and how these were all linked to national finance.3 Some,
however, were never reconciled. Ames, who was rabid against
the merchants who joined with the Democrats in denouncing
the treaty, could not disguise his “contempt for the blindness
and gullibility of the rich men who so readily lend their strength
to the party which is thirsting for the contents of their iron
chests.” 4

A town meeting in Boston condemned the treaty as injuri¬
ous to commerce, derogatory to national honor, and dangerous
to the peace of the citizens.5 At Portsmouth a meeting of the
people expressed their “most hearty disapprobation.” 6 In
western Massachusetts Caleb Strong reported the people quiet,
and Wolcott said there would be no trouble in Connecticut,
where the people were “calm and hard at work.” 7 Boston,
however, was by no means calm, and the opinion of certain

1 J. F. McLaughlin, Matthew Lyon, p. 212.

2 Diary , vol. II, p. 174 [1796]. 3 Cf. Beard, Economic Origins , p. 295.

4 Gibbs, Administrations of Washington and Adams , vol. I, p. 210.

5 Treaty of Amity, Commerce and Navigation , (Philadelphia, 1795), p. 155.

6 Ibid., p. 159.

7 Pickering, Timothy Pickering , vol. Ill, p. 199; Gibbs, op. cit ., vol. I, p. 215.

THE REVOLUTION EXTENDED

217

sections there took the usual expression of mob violence. A
British privateer was attacked and destroyed at its dock, and
other vessels threatened.1 Throughout the summer effigies were
burned and mobs paraded the streets, much to the fear of the
more timid inhabitants, some of whom took refuge in the country.
Effigies were also burned at Newport, and some efforts were
made from New Haven to foment trouble in Connecticut.2

The Boston Chamber of Commerce met in August and ap¬
proved the treaty, and by that time the merchants generally
had rallied to its support. Partly from the reaction against
the more violent acts and speeches of the Democrats, and
partly by the efforts of the Federalist leaders and particularly
the clergy, public sentiment shifted, and the next year, when the
treaty was ratified by the United States Senate, it met with no
opposition in New England.

The Congregational clergy, occupying a privileged position
and with vested interests, were the natural allies of the rich
and conservative elements in New England. The backbone
of the Federalist party was made up of the merchant-lawyer-
capitalist group, the clergy, and the local magnates who, in the
small villages and towns, had been accustomed to a position
and a political influence similar to those of the country gentry
in England. John Adams always saw clearly the many social
and economic conflicts of interest in New England society,
which for long escaped the more modern historians of that
section. “The state of Connecticut,” he wrote in 1808, “has
always been governed by an aristocracy, more decisively than
the empire of Great Britain is. Half a dozen, or, at most, a
dozen families, have controlled that country when a colony,
as well as since it has been a state. An aristocracy can govern
the elections of the people without hereditary legal dignities,
privileges, and powers, better than with them. In the Massa¬
chusetts, many of our prime men were banished in the Revo¬
lution. Most of our present rulers are new men. But these
have been promoted by an aristocracy.” In America he saw
that this aristocracy was based solely on money. Two parties,
he said, have always existed in every country, the rich and the

1 Morse, Federal Party , pp. i 53^. 2 Gibbs, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 226, 229.

218

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

poor. Land speculation had always been rampant in America,
and Adams, well knowing the answer, queried whether “this
spirit has not become a rage, from Georgia to New Hampshire,
within the last thirty years ? Whether foundations have not
been laid for immense fortunes in a few families for their pos¬
terity ? Whether the variations of a fluctuating medium and an
unsteady public faith have not raised vast fortunes in personal
property, in banks, in commerce, in roads, bridges, &c. ? ” 1

These compact governing groups felt themselves governing
by divine right. They also felt themselves almost impreg-
nably entrenched, as indeed they were. An examination of the
interrelations of the governing group in Connecticut, for ex¬
ample, is most illuminating. Dr. Timothy Dwight, the lead¬
ing clergyman of the state, known as “the Pope,” and United
States Senator James Hillhouse had married sisters. In 1800
Theodore Dwight, brother of “the Pope,” was candidate for
Congress. Congressman Morris married Dwight’s sister.
Congressman Hosmer was related to Hillhouse by marriage.
Congressman Chauncey Goodrich had married a sister of
Oliver Wolcott, Secretary of the Treasury. Roger Griswold,
a candidate for Congress in the same election of 1800, was a
cousin of Hillhouse ; and so the relations could be continued
with other members of the dominating group.2

On the other side, Adams saw “the common people,” as he
called them, the “farmers, tradesmen and laborers, many of
the smaller shopkeepers and merchants” who, when they could
not by the utmost industry and frugality in a life of seventy
years do more than support a family and lay up four or five
thousand dollars, must think it very hard when they saw
mushroom fortunes springing up, and would be ready to throw
themselves into the arms of a party who would oppose the
existing order.3 Naturally, those in control of the purse and
politics of society wanted no opposition, and Hillhouse, who
to a great extent did both in Connecticut, called the new party
spirit “a demon and a fiend.” 4

1 Works , vol. VI, p. 530.

2 Quoted from The Aurora by Beard, Economic Origins , p. 364.

3 Works , vol. VI, p. 531. 4 Ibid., p. 540.

THE REVOLUTION EXTENDED

219

The fear thrown into the hearts of the conservatives by the
secret Democratic societies and the mobbish spirit of those
who had so violently opposed Jay’s Treaty had done much to
embitter the relations between the two sections of society.
But as the French Revolution advanced, threatening to destroy
all established society and to overthrow the Christian religion,
the Democrats, who had so frenziedly espoused its cause and to
a great extent still maintained it, came to be regarded with an
abhorrence that is almost impossible to realize to-day. The
clergy needed no inducement other than their obvious interest
to become Federalists, but in the religious excesses of the Revo¬
lution they found a weapon made to their hand with which to
confound their Democratic enemies. At first many of the
clergy had been in favor of the overthrow of the monarchy and
friendly to the Revolution, just as many of the merchants had
at first been opposed to Jay’s Treaty; but a reversal took
place in the one case as completely as in the other, and by the
end of 1795 there was not a clerical voice raised in New England
except in denunciation of the atheism of the French Revolu¬
tionists and American Democrats. The clerical reaction to
the confiscation of all church property by the French, to the
installation of “the Goddess of Reason,” and to the abolition
of the Christian Sabbath so venerated in New England, was all
natural enough. In addition the clergy were at this time
deeply stirred by what they considered as an engulfing wave
of atheism in New England itself. Paine’s Age of Reason
appeared in 1794 and created an unprecedented sensation.
Yale and Harvard were hotbeds of infidelity. The events of
the years from 1793 to 1795 in France thus brought flocking to
the standards of Federalism in New England all those who
placed the rights of property above those of man, and the claims
of orthodoxy and an established church above those of free-
thinking. In spite of the fact that the power of the clergy
had been slowly undermined for many decades, it was still
great, particularly in the rural districts, and, largely as a result
of their efforts, Federalism had become completely dominant
in New England by 1797.

Democratic feeling, however, was also rising, and although

220

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

the New England Democrats did not dare or perhaps wish to
attack religion itself as in the Middle States, nevertheless they
did not hesitate to oppose bitterly this advance of the solid
phalanx of Congregational clergy into the political arena.
Although the bitterness with which the Democrats complained
of the political activity of the clergy is an indication of dread
of their power, it is also an indication of the altered position
of the latter. It was admitted, by both their friends and foes,
that “that servile awe, which in a royal government, was felt
both towards magistrates and ministers” had been much dissi¬
pated by the American Revolution. The growth in demo¬
cratic spirit had affected the social position of the clergy, and
poverty, with resulting quarrels over salaries, had tended to
lessen the respect felt for the minister in many of the country
parishes.1

Among the laity, apart from the inroads of actual infidelity,
there was rapidly developing a liberalizing of the older Cal¬
vinism and an indifference to doctrine. This movement was
felt even among the clergy themselves in the larger centres,
and in Boston a visitor wrote in 1791 that the ministers there
were so diverse in their views that they could not agree on any
one point in theology. Ten years later there was but one
minister in that city who accepted the doctrine of the Trinity.2

In Connecticut, where some of the bitterest political opposi¬
tion to the clergy was found, there were also special forces at
work. There, as elsewhere, the Anti-Federalists were the
advocates of wider suffrage and religious toleration, but equal
religious rights were not secured until after the dissenters had
joined with the Republicans to secure a majority of the popu¬
lar vote.3 Throughout this decade and the next, however,
dissent steadily increased, the Baptists especially becoming
active in the attack on the injustices of the standing order.
One of these was the fact that the lower schools were practi¬
cally parochial schools of the Congregational church, but the
authority of the government was also being seriously ques-

1 Morse, Federal Party , p. 123.

2 G. W. Cooke, Unitarianism in America , (Boston, 1910), p. 75.

3 Purcell, Connecticut in Transition , p. 47

Students on the Green
From Leslie's Weekly , 1856

X ll-

THE REVOLUTION EXTENDED

221

tioned in such matters as compulsory church attendance on
Sundays and the taxation of every person for some form of
worship. A reactionary law was passed in 1791, changing the
requirements as to the certificates which every dissenter was
obliged to take out, so that thereafter they had to be signed
by two civil officers or a justice of the peace, and this provoked
a storm throughout the state. The justices were for the most
part members of the Congregational church, as were most
political officeholders, and this backward step entrenched the
church more strongly than ever. Although the law was re¬
pealed, the substitute did not give the dissenters the relief to
which they felt they were entitled.1

Another grievance was that involved in public taxation for
the support of Yale College, a Congregational institution. In
1793 another storm was raised over the sale of some of the
state's western lands and the appropriation of the proceeds in
a manner that the dissenters believed would inure almost
wholly to the benefit of the established church.2 About the
same time the governor issued a proclamation ordering that a
contribution be taken up in every parish for the support of the
Presbyterian missions in the west, to which the dissenters
naturally objected strongly.3 In 1794 a Baptist, the Reverend
John Leland, addressed a great throng which had assembled
in front of the capitol at Hartford, coming from all parts of the
state, and almost threatening civil war. He proclaimed abso¬
lute liberty of conscience; denied that the civil government
had any right to regulate religion; asserted that Church and
State should be separate ; and advised that the constitution
be remedied so that the dissenters could secure their rights
in a constitutional manner.4 In this speech he foreshad¬
owed the union of the dissenters and Republicans to secure
control of government by the ballot and the downfall of the

1 Greene, Religious Liberty , pp. 372 ff.

2 Ibid., pp. 381 ff.

3 From the time of the Saybrook Platform the churches in Connecticut had been
largely Presbyterian in character, and the terms Presbyterian and Congregational were
used at this period interchangeably. Ibid., p. 150.

4 Ibid., pp. 387 ff.; Purcell, Connecticut in Transition , pp. 76 /. The law as to lands
was repealed, and the proceeds were appropriated to the maintenance of schools, thus
laying the foundation of the School Fund.

222

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

established church, both of which were to be witnessed within
a few years.

Centring around the years of the election of 1800, feeling
on both sides took on an intense bitterness. The clergy in¬
dulged in vitriolic diatribes against the Republicans, from their
leader, Thomas Jefferson, down to the humbler members of the
party in country villages. In his Fourth of July oration in
1798 Timothy Dwight attacked at once the freethinkers, French,
and Democrats. “For what end shall we be connected with
men of whom this is the character and the conduct?” he
asked. “ Is it that our churches may become temples of reason,
our Sabbath a decade, and our psalms of praise Marsellaise
hymns ? Is it that we may change our holy worship into a
dance of Jacobin phrenzy and that we may behold a strumpet
personating a Goddess on the altars of Jehovah? ... Is it
that we may see our wives and daughters the victims of
legal prostitution . . . the loathing of God and man ? Shall
we, my brethren, become partakers of these sins ? Shall we
introduce them into our government, our schools, our fam¬
ilies ? Shall our sons become the disciples of Voltaire, and
the dragoons of Marat ; or our daughers the concubines of the
Illuminati ?” 1

The innumerable letter-writers to the newspapers who
rallied to the support of the clergy when attacked for political
interference by the Republicans indulged themselves in similar
vein. “Jacobinism exclaims against the influence of the
clergy,” wrote one; “and why? Because Jacobinism wishes
to see mankind without moral restraint or bias . It exclaims
against every object which thwarts the natural appetites of
war, or which tends to the moral connection of human society.
How boldly does it deny the propriety of the marriage cove¬
nant, of the tender connexions of life, of the obligation of a
promise, and the quiet possession of individual property /” 2

1 Quoted by Beard, Economic Origins , pp. 365 /. The Illuminati was a secret order
that had been instituted many years before in Germany, and which some of the clergy
believed had been transported to New England. It had not, but the excitement
raised over the question added to the ferment of those days. Vide V. Stauffer, New
England and the Bavarian Illuminati , cit. supra.

2 Conn. Courant , Sept. 28, 1801.

THE REVOLUTION EXTENDED

223

Another wrote, “Shall we find them [Republicans] affectionate
and faithful husbands ? Are they men, who patiently wait
for the freemen to elect them into office, as they may deserve ?
Do they practice the meek, and pious duties of Religion, by
doing justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly ? . . . Do
they not wish, by introducing their unsettled, and turbulent
practices, which are so diametrically opposite to our old habits,
to get themselves into those places, which they cannot obtain
under the present regular, and settled course of proceedings,
and then to force out of office, the honorable, and virtuous men,
who now fill our Counsels with singular wisdom, integrity and
talents ?” 1

Around none of the rising local Democratic leaders in New
England did the windy words of controversy swirl more wildly
than round Abraham Bishop of New Haven, and he did not
hesitate to give as good as he received. The American Revo¬
lution, he said in a speech at Wallingford, had promised much
in favor of freedom of mind and conscience, but the blow had
to be followed up. The Revolution would never be accom¬
plished until Church and State had been separated. Moses
and Aaron found it too profitable to walk hand in hand. “The
clergyman preaches politics, the civilian prates of orthodoxy,
and if any man refuses to join the coalition, they endeavor to
hunt him down to the tune of ‘ the church is in danger. ’ ” This,
he said, bred hypocrisy throughout the whole community.
“We are taught hypocrisy from our cradles,” as he put it, and
“those who live in the midst of this deceitful union, will feel
the force of these remarks; those who do not, can but very
imperfectly conceive what it forms to the introduction of any
truth, which can diminish the power, wealth or infallibility of
the fraternity.” He denounced the “family alliances, produc¬
ing patriarchs in opinion and the general habit of whole towns
committing to a few individuals the power to dictate to them
opinions on all subjects. . . . Steady habits,” he contended,
were made use of to arrest the progress of truth, to maintain
an obsequious subservience to the clergy in place of genuine
religion, and to keep in office, by manipulation of nominations,

1 Conn. Courant , April 6, 1801.

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

224

the self-perpetuating oligarchical group of rulers instead of
allowing the people to choose their own.1

The economic issue, however, was also well in the forefront
of discussion. In Connecticut, Bishop attacked the financial
system of the Federalists, denounced commerce with its re¬
quirement for an expensive navy to protect it, and upheld the
interests of the farmers as the backbone of the State.2 On the
other hand, the Federalists predicted certain ruin for all holders
of the public funds, for stockholders in the banks, insurance
companies, and other corporations, if Jefferson and the Demo¬
crats should be elected.3 That the two parties represented
two opposed economic blocs in the state, in the main the capi¬
talists and merchants against the agrarians, was well recog¬
nized on both sides at the time.

As the last years of the century passed, the confusion and
bitterness grew. The firm attitude displayed by the Federal
government toward France was a wise one, though it angered
the Democrats. When, in 1798, however, the Alien and Sedi¬
tion Laws were passed, they deserved the storm of protest with
which they were greeted by the opposition.4 Nevertheless,
when Kentucky and Virginia passed their resolutions, the
Federalist legislatures of the New England states promptly
and unequivocally sustained the constitutionality of the two
Acts and denounced the states’-rights doctrines advanced by
the two Southern states.5 The legislature of Massachusetts,
for example, declared that if the states had the right to pass
on the constitutionality of the acts of the Federal government
it would reduce the Constitution to a nullity, and that they
firmly believed that the various states were connected by a
common interest that ought to render the Union indissoluble.6

As we shall see in the next two chapters, the extremists among
the New England Federalists were quite willing to change their

1 Oration 'Delivered at Wallingford , March //, iSoi, (New Haven, 1801), pp. v, 13, 17.

2 Connecticut Republicanism , An Oration , (Philadelphia, 1800), passim.

3 Cf. quotations from Boston papers. Beard, Economic Origins , pp. 358 ff.

4 Johnston and Woodburn, American Political History , (New York, 1910), vol. I,
pp. 182/.

5 H. V. Ames, State Documents on Federal Relations , (Philadelphia, 1906), pp. 15 ff.

6 Ibid., pp. 19/.

THE REVOLUTION EXTENDED

225

note entirely within a few years, and to conspire to dissolve
the Union which they now so strongly upheld. In fact,
throughout all the early years of the republic there was constant
talk of dissolution, both North and South. In the years 1796
to 1798 a series of letters were published in the Connecticut
Courant , claiming that the economic and moral differences
between the two sections, and above all the presence of slavery
in the South, were bound to cause a forcible and final separation
of the states.1 The articles were very violent in tone, and the
morals of the Southern planters were bitterly attacked, whereas
New Englanders were held up as models of religion and
virtue. In his inaugural address in 1801, Governor Trumbull
repelled the idea of secession with deep aversion, but said
to the legislature that he heard much too frequently from
many quarters doubts expressed as to the continuance of the
Union.2

It is in this decade also that we get our first glimpse of a
movement which was later to transform New England political
life — the foreign vote. In 1794 Oliver Ellsworth wrote to
Wolcott that there was much to be apprehended “from the
great numbers of violent men who emigrate to this country
from every part of Europe.” 3 In New England it was the
Irish who were at this time giving special concern to the Fed¬
eralists, for not only were they coming in considerable numbers,
owing to the recent disturbances in Ireland, but they all or
nearly all joined the ranks of the Democrats ; and it must be
remembered that the conservative Federalists regarded the
latter much as we have lately looked upon the Bolsheviks and
other Reds. Rufus King, who was in England in 1798 after
the Irish Rebellion had been suppressed, was much exercised
over the possibility of heavy emigration from that island to the
United States, and particularly the disposal of the state pris¬
oners. He wrote to Pickering, who was then Secretary of
State, that probably thousands of fugitives would seek an

1 Some of these letters were signed “Pelham” and some “Gustavus.” Conn.
Courant , Nov. 12, Dec. 12, 1796; July 31, Aug. 21, 28, Sept. 11, 1797; April 9, 1798.

2 Ibid,, Oct. 12, 1801.

3 Gibbs, Administrations of Washington and Adams , vol. I, p. 136.

226

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

asylum in America, and that their principles and habits would
exercise a pernicious effect.1

The Irish rebels were supposed to have been in close touch
with the French revolutionists and to have the same views.
King remonstrated with the English Government against any
of them being allowed to leave for America, and his course was
approved by President Adams. Mr. King feared particularly
those who belonged to the higher social and professional classes
and who might for that very reason exercise a greater influence
upon the New Englanders. In answer to a letter from him,
William Bingham replied that these would undoubtedly be far
more dangerous than the ordinary disaffected Irish, for “they
will join the party in opposition to Government and will vent
their resentments against Great Britain by attacking those
[the Federalists] who are disposed to be on friendly terms with
her. They will be discontented and disorganizing characters
whose residence among us cannot be otherwise than injurious
in the present moment of political agitation. ” 2

Nevertheless, many Irish came, and by the creation of “The
American Society of United Irishmen” formed a compact body
which threw its whole political weight with the Democrats
against the Federalists. It was a secret society and thus
aroused all the fears that the Jacobin Democratic Clubs had
three or four years earlier. Although its members were pledged
primarily to the emancipation of Ireland, their constitution
also proclaimed that they would strive for “the attainment of
liberty and equality to mankind in whatever nation they
resided.” 3 At this time, though the figures were probably
greatly exaggerated, it was computed that there were thirty
thousand French and fifty thousand Irish refugees in the
United States, and the fear of these refugees had been one of
the motives for the passage of the Alien Act. Writing some
years afterward, William Sullivan noted that these Irish immi¬
grants hated England and were devoted to France, and that
they were easily led into hatred of the government of the

1 King, Rufus King , vol. II, p. 637. 2 Ibid., pp. 639 ff., 644.

3 J. C. Hamilton, History of the Republic of the United States, (Philadelphia, 1864),
vol. VII, p. 1 58.

THE REVOLUTION EXTENDED

227

United States — by which latter he apparently meant the
Federal party and its policies. He therefore thought that
these newcomers merited “punitive measures” by the govern¬
ment.1

Fisher Ames complained that the patriots of ’7 6 never
“contemplated the claim of the imported united Irish, that a
mob should govern us.” 2 That the Irish did not all vote the
Democratic ticket, however, is indicated in an article analyzing
the reasons for the increased Federal vote in Boston in 1800,
which attributed it in part to the vote of a bloc of “forty men
- of color” and the fact that “the United Irishmen” did “not
yet all of them perceive” that by supporting the Federalists
they were voting for the same maxims in government from
which they had fled.3 A few years later a traveler, writing
from Boston, reported that the Irish were exceedingly useful,
performing a great part of the heaviest labor, and although
without money or education were happy, independent, and
attached to the government.4

By 1798 the acts of the revolutionists in France had so far
alienated American sympathy as to react seriously upon the
Democratic cause in New England, and that year marks the
highest point to which Federalism attained in that section.
American politics still traveled in the wake of European hap¬
penings, and the Federalist party was soon to be split into two
antagonistic sections by events connected with the country
which had kept America in a ferment for nearly a decade.
The Federalist leaders had been loudly demanding war with
France, and the country was felt to be on the verge of pro¬
claimed hostilities, when President Adams suddenly sent an
envoy to Paris without even consulting his Cabinet, and
avoided the war so heartily desired. The breach thus made
between the Federalist President and the more extreme leaders
of his party weakened it for the presidential election of 1800.
Nevertheless, when the election was over four out of five

1 Familiar Letters , Boston, 1834, p. 127.

2 Works , vol. II, p. 212.

3 Independent Chronicle , Nov. 3, 1800.

4 John Melish, Travels through the United States ... in l8o6> (Philadelphia, 1815),
vol. I, p. 93.

228

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

New England governors were Federalist, the Federalists con¬
trolled all of the legislatures, and a large majority of the repre¬
sentatives in Congress and all of the senators were of the same
party.1 It was a curious reversal that the western counties of
Massachusetts, which had been most radical during the period
of Shays's Rebellion, had now become the stronghold of con¬
servatism, and for years after 1800 continued to roll up large
Federal majorities.2

Nevertheless, Republican strength was growing, and the
movement against the established order in religion, politics,
and finance had acquired a momentum that nothing thereafter
could stop. The opposition elements were no longer scattered,
without leaders and without cohesion. They had learned how
to use political machinery and to make public opinion. The
“steady habits” of Connecticut seemed to make that state
impregnable to the onslaughts of the radical party, it being, in
Aaron Burr’s judgment, so hopeless to change anything there
that one “might as soon attempt to revolutionize the kingdom
of heaven.” 3 But even in Connecticut a Federalist writer to
the Courant , oblivious of the way in which the clergy had made
their pulpits into political platforms, complained that, if one
would see the Democrats at work, “let him follow them to their
Democratic Thanksgivings, where, under the masque of public
worship, they are practising intrigue, and disorganization ;
where the state is divided into departments, and each man has
his task assigned him, to deceive, and ensnare the unwary,
and to breed swift destruction to our happy country. There
he will find midnight plottings to destroy our government, to
corrupt our morals, to debauch our youth, and trample under
foot our Religion.” 4 This was merely the Federalist way of
saying that the Democrats were becoming dangerously active
in practical politics. Indeed, it was complained that “for the

1 Robinson, Jeffersonian Democracy , p. 35.

2 1 have seen no adequate explanation of this, and can offer none. It may be said,
however, that the clergy had an unusually strong hold there, and that after the rebellion
many hundreds of the more radical citizens migrated to Vermont and elsewhere.
Vide Morse, Federal Party , pp. 180 ff.

3 Quoted by Robinson, cit. supra , p. 28.

4 Conn. Courant , April 8, 1801.

THE REVOLUTION EXTENDED

229-

first time they have had the audacity in the state of Connecticut
to circulate printed tickets” when drawing up nominations.1

Moreover, the discussion at the time of the Revolution and
later in the voting on the State and Federal Constitutions had
bred a love of politics and public discussion among the people
at large. “The Americans are all politicians, and every man
a federalist or a democrat,” wrote a traveler in Connecticut in
1 806. 2 He commented on the universal reading of newspapers,
and stated that there was “scarcely a poor owner of a miserable
log hut, who lives on the border of the stage road, but has a
newspaper left at his door.” The Democratic news-sheets
were undoubtedly becoming effective agents in influencing the
people, and the Federalists were alarmed. “Public opinion
must be addressed,” wrote Ames in 1802, “must be purified
from the dangerous errors with which it is infected. . . . The
federalists must entrench themselves in the State governments,
and endeavor to make State justice and State power a shelter
of the wise, and good, and rich, from the wild destroying rage
of the southern Jacobins.” 3

1 Robinson, op. cit ., p. 28.

2 John Lambert, Travels through Canada and the United States , 1806, 1807 , and 1S09 ,
(London, 1814), p. 10.

3 Works , vol. I, p. 310.

CHAPTER X

PROSPERITY AND RUIN

Democratic Victory — Political Methods and Machinery —
Suffrage Agitation in Connecticut — Acquisition of Louisiana
— Secessionist Plot — Commercial Prosperity — Renewed Euro¬
pean Complications — Chesapeake Affah - Impressment of

Seamen — The Embargo

In the country at large, the Democratic party had been
successful, and Thomas Jefferson was elected President in 1800.
He himself declared, some years later, that the election was
as genuine a revolution as had been that of 177 6.1 The Fed¬
eralist party, wise as many of their measures had been and
much as the country owes to them for piloting the State through
the first troubled years, had represented a natural conservative
reaction from the philosophy of the Revolutionary period. Now,
for the first time, the nation was to be governed by a man and
a party who still believed in that philosophy ; and in this sense
Jefferson’s words were true. Federalism had been, as Henry
Adams termed it, but “a halfway house between the European
past and the American future.” 2 The people had at length
come into possession of what they had believed themselves to be
fighting for a generation earlier; and that fact, which seemed
to “ the wise, the good and the rich ” a portent of all imaginable
horrors, sent shudders up their spines.

To the clergy of the established church in New England,
the accession to the presidency of a man who believed neither
in priests, a state church, nor revealed religion, appeared to
herald the approach of Antichrist. The removal of many

1 J. P. Gordy, History of Political Parties , (New York, 1900), vol. I, p. 382.

2 History of the United States , (New York, 1889), vol. II, p. 76.

PROSPERITY AND RUIN

231

Federalists from office in order to replace them by Democrats
was regarded as an effort to sweep away all bulwarks of estab¬
lished order. Dr. Dwight poured out his wrath and fears in
language so frenzied as to be almost insane. The object of
“Jacobinism/’ he said, was to destroy every trace of civiliza¬
tion in the world. “We have now reached the consummation
of democratic blessedness. We have a country governed by
blockheads and knaves ; the ties of marriage with all its felic¬
ities are severed and destroyed ; our wives and daughters are
thrown into the stews; our children are cast into the world
from the breast and forgotten. . . . Can the imagination
paint anything more dreadful on this side hell ?” 1

If a man of Dwight’s distinguished position and talents
could be led to such utterly unfounded outbursts as this, the
tone and feelings of lesser partisans may well be imagined.
At first, indeed, Jefferson’s statements and policies were so
much more conservative and reconciling than had been antici¬
pated that many were led to realize that the dangers had been
overestimated. His removals from office, however, particularly
in the case of the collectorship at New Haven, and his attitude
— easily to be sympathized with — toward the clergy in New
England who attacked him so violently, brought about a bitter¬
ness of partisan feeling in New England that had never before
been equaled.

It was no longer the views of the opposing parties that came
to be roundly denounced by either side, but the methods used
by both in developing their influence and machinery. The
Democratic Clubs formed in Connecticut were execrated for
being as wicked as those of France. “A number of the most
vicious men in the world,” wrote a Federalist, “who are pam¬
pered by large salaries and incomes from the public money,
have established revolutionary committees thro’ the state, to
co-operate in the avowed design of overturning the govern¬
ment”; and added that if they ever obtained control of the
legislature they would introduce complete anarchy.2 On the

1 Quoted by Adams, Hist, of U. 4 S’., vol. I, p. 225.

2 Conn. Courant, March 30, 1803. Cf. The 6th of August or the Litchfield Festival , (n.
p. 1806).

232

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

other hand, the Democrats complained in no uncertain terms
of the methods of the Federalists. “An Election Day is the
season of tyranny, and almost of usurpation,” we read in one
attack. “At this period every petty nabob exercises his powers
and influence. Every avenue is thronged with hirelings,
sycophants, and cringing supplicants, who live on the smiles,
patronage and drudgery of their employers : a long list of vote
distributors are published in the Gazette ” (he added), and these
are placed about the city. “Why are these men so active in
inspecting every man’s vote ? and by frowns and menaces
terrifying those who may not readily accede to their candidates ?
Will any person presume to deny the influence which such a
formidable combination produces ; or say, that many indi¬
viduals are not intimidated when acting under the immediate
eye of those who have it in their power to injure them in their
various occupations ?” 1

It was claimed, apparently not without reason, that the
banks also acted for the Federalists. Under their direction,
we find in one article, “ the middling interest were controlled
by impending ruinous checks on their renewals. This is not
conjecture, it is fact. Men were told, if they expected their
notes should be honored at the bank, they must be federalists.” 2
Within a few years following the “revolution of 1800” the
Federalists organized their machinery in all the New England
states on the basis of a legislative caucus, with local committees
reaching down through the towns. It was done with extreme
caution, owing to the dislike of the New Englanders for giving
up their apparent freedom of choice in the matter of can¬
didates.3

1 Independent Chronicle , April 19, 1804.

2 Ibid., April 19, May 3, Sept. 6, 1804. Cf. Morison, Oiis> vol. I, pp. 260 /.

3 For the development of the system in Massachusetts, with notes on New Hamp¬
shire and Rhode Island, vide Morison, Otis , vol. I, pp. 286 Jf. The following “Address
to the Freemen of Connecticut” describes the inception of the system in that state.
“The members of the House of Representatives and a number of persons from various
parts of the State have thought proper to meet at the State House and consider the
political situation in view of the organized system of the Democrats.”

“It could not escape the consideration of any person present, that a proceeding of
this nature was a deviation from the ancient practice of the State. That it would be
far better, that all the freemen should exercise their elective rights without any inter¬
ference whatever. But although the result of the late election had proved, that a large

PROSPERITY AND RUIN

233

The keynote of Federalism was distrust in the common man.
Belief in him was the battle cry of the Democrats. It was
natural, therefore, that one of the earliest issues raised in New
England should have been that of the restricted suffrage.
Owing to the fact that Vermont had no property qualification
at all, and that in New Hampshire every adult male who paid
a tax or did militia duty could vote, the struggle was confined
to the three southern states of the section. It is noteworthy
that in Connecticut, where the people had least voice in their
affairs, the programme of the Democrats assumed its most
radical form. In Massachusetts there were said to be twenty-
seven thousand men unenfranchised for lack of sufficient
property, though twenty thousand of them paid taxes.1 The
question in that state, however, did not become the burning
one which it did in Connecticut, and in fact did not attract
much attention until 1809.

In Connecticut the Federalist party, alarmed by the increase
in Republican votes, passed an act in 1801, known as the
<c Stand-up Law” from the fact that among other provisions
it required that the freemen in voting, instead of depositing
ballots, should stand up to be counted. The whole law was
aimed at increasing the undue influence of the “wise and rich,”
and created a paroxysm of anger among the Republicans. The
Federalists denied that taxation and representation were
reciprocal, and did their best to nullify the effects of the slo¬
gan of 1776.2 Noah Webster declared flatly that “our laws

and decided majority of our fellow citizens were determined to support the Govern¬
ment of the State, yet the form of our election was known to be such, that the will
of the majority might ultimately be defeated, should they not unite on their candidates.

. . . But how to form a list of Candidates, which should be unexceptionable with
respect to the manner of making it, and which would probably unite the suffrages of
the freemen, is a subject novel in this State and of great difficulty. . . . Any attempt
by a few individuals to direct the public attention to a particular list of Candidates
might be considered as an officious interference with the right of suffrage. But under
the peculiar circumstances of the times, it was believed, that the people of the State
would not deem it improper for the Representatives of the towns, with such other
persons as were present, during the session of the Legislature, to submit to the freemen,
a list of candidates to compose the nominations for Assistants in September next. In
this proceeding, it must be evident that we are acting only on the defensive. Those
who are attempting to destroy the government of the State, have led the way. They
form their lists and they unite to a man.” Conn. Courant , June 8, 1803.

1 Independent Chronicle , Aug. 23, 1804. 2 Conn. Courant , March 2, 1803.

m

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

principally respect property; that is their great object”; and
that to give all men the suffrage would be to prostrate “the
wealth of individuals to the rapaciousness of a merciless gang.”1
In 1802 a bill proposed by Colonel Ephraim Kirby, providing
for written ballots, was defeated by one hundred and twenty
to fifty-nine in the legislature, and all attempts of the Repub¬
licans to safeguard or extend the suffrage broke in vain against
the solid opposition of the Federalist majority.

As has been pointed out several times, the machinery of
elections was so devised as to keep perpetually in power those
who already exercised it, and the prospect therefore appeared
hopeless for the opposition, which although growing in numbers
was likely to remain a minority for a long time. It was natural
that the lack of a written constitution and the question of the
legality of that under which the state was functioning should
again be agitated. On the twenty-ninth of August, 1804, after
much discussion, a convention of Republican delegates from
ninety-seven towns met at New Haven and voted an address
to the people.2

Starting with a quotatiomfrom the Declaration of Indepen¬
dence, the address proceeded and stated that by that declara¬
tion the sovereignty had been vested in the people, but had
never been exercised by them. Although every state in the
Union except Rhode Island and Connecticut had adopted
written constitutions based upon the consent of the people,
in Connecticut there was no constitution — only a government
that had never received the approval of the electorate. This
government, excellent as it might seem to those who exercised
it, was in reality a bad government because it gave the power
to a group, tended to the increase of aristocracies, and was
unfriendly to the principles of the American Revolution. It
had been said that all had gone well in Connecticut ; but “what
prudent farmer among us,” the address asked, “is contented
with the abundant crops of his farm, while he has no title deed
on record ?” The grievances of the times were indicated by the
points that should be looked for in a new constitution. This,

1 Purcell, Connecticut in Transition , p. 225.

2 Conn. Courant , Aug. 15, 22, 29, Sept. 5, 19, 26, Oct. 3, 1804.

PROSPERITY AND RUIN

235

it was stated, should declare that taxation and representation
were inseparable ; that all men should be free in the exercise of
their religion ; that judges should be dependent on the will
of the people ; that the qualifications of freemen should be de¬
termined so that the legislature could not alter them at will ;
and that a separation of the executive, legislative, and judicial
powers should be effected, so that the legislature should not
combine them all.1 The address denied that a constitution
was desired in the interests of party, and pointed out that the
“interests of a legislature in power and those of the people
may be at variance; but the interests of a [constitutional]
convention and those of the people are the same.”

In Federalist pamphlets the New Haven meeting was de¬
nounced as “a daring outrage against order and civil society,”
and it was claimed that if the people generally had been “as
violent and desperate as some of those factious leaders, the
whole state would have become an aceldama or field of blood.” 2
The elections of 1805 were fought over this issue of a constitu¬
tion. The wealthy towns of the Connecticut Valley and else¬
where were Federalist, whereas those in which religious dissent
was a force were Democratic ; but in the new legislature the
Federalists continued to outnumber the Republicans nearly
two to one, in spite of gains at the polls by the latter.3 Never¬
theless, the leaven was at work.

In 1803 a far greater question had been injected into party
strife by the unexpected acquisition by Jefferson from the
French government of the ill-defined territory of Louisiana.
For obvious reasons the Federalists were in arms at once.
Threatened as they were on every side with the destruction of
their party by the rising tide of Democracy, even in the conserv¬
ative strongholds of New England, the prospect of a large
addition to the Union of Democratic and slave territory was
indeed alarming. As has been pointed out again and again,
the Federalists viewed with the utmost abhorrence and genuine

1 Address to the People of the State of Connecticut , Broadside in the Library of Con¬
gress.

2 [David Daggett] Steady Habits Vindicated , (Hartford, 1805), p. 9.

3 Purcell, Connecticut in Transition , pp. 265 ff.

2j6 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

fear the democratic doctrines on which the Revolution had
rested philosophically. Moreover, although up to 1800 the
Federalists had been a national party, they were losing ground
faster in the South than in New England, and had practically
no foothold at all in the now rapidly expanding West. In
addition, the compromise in the Federal Constitution by which
the slave states had been given additional representation of
three fifths of the slave population had always rankled in the
free states.1 In Congress the New England representatives in
both houses were almost solidly against the purchase. Al¬
though the constitutional aspects of the problem came in for
much debate, Uriah Tracy of Connecticut, in what was perhaps
the ablest speech on the Federalist side, put his finger on the
main point : “The relative strength which this admission gives
to a Southern and Western interest is contradictory to the
principles of the original Union.” 2

The accession became an accomplished fact by the votes
of the Republicans, and at once some of the New England
Federalist leaders entered upon the path of threatened secession
from the Union which they were to follow at intervals during
the next decade.3 Of the United States senators from that
section, Plumer and Olcott from New Hampshire, Pickering
and Adams from Massachusetts, Tracy and Hillhouse from
Connecticut, all but two — Olcott and Adams — believed
secession to be inevitable.4 In the House, Roger Griswold
and Calvin Goddard of Connecticut and Samuel Hunt of New
Hampshire were of the same belief. In January 1804 Picker¬
ing wrote a long letter to George Cabot on what he called the
“delicate subject.” Everything, he said, pointed to the
necessity of separation, and he believed the sooner the better.
When and how were the only questions. Federalism was

1 There were some slaves held in the Northern states. According to the first census,
in 1790, New Hampshire had 157, Rhode Island 958, Connecticut 2648, New York
21,193, New Jersey 11,423, Pennsylvania 3 707, and Delaware 8887. The overwhelm¬
ing sectional difference, however, is shown by the figures for the rest of the Union —
645,234. Century of Population Growth , pp. 201 /.

2 Adams, Hist, of U. S ., vol. II, pp. 107/.

3 The suggestion appeared as early as August 1803, although the main agitation
occurred in the next year. Vide Conn. Courant , Aug. 17, 1803.

4 Adams, op. cit ., vol. II, p. 160; Plumer, William Plumer , pp. 283 ff.

PROSPERITY AND RUIN

237

crumbling, even in New England, and he thought there was
no time to be lost. He felt sure that the concurrence of all
the New England states could be secured, but that New York
would have to be made the centre of the new confederation.1
Pickering pointed to the spring sessions of the several legisla¬
tures as the time for action, and as the weeks went by a plot
took definite form. In March, Griswold wrote from Wash¬
ington that there could be no safety for the Northern states
without a separation, and that the project the conspirators
had formed was to induce the legislatures of the three New
England states which had remained Federal, beginning with
Massachusetts, to call for an independent reunion of the
Northern states, and then to be governed by circumstances.2
As the plot matured, others were approached, among them
Aaron Burr, whom it was planned to make the head of the
new nation. Alexander Hamilton, whom it was hoped to
draw in, disapproved of the scheme, which he thought had
great practical disadvantages while at the same time “ad¬
ministering no relief to our real disease, which is Democ¬
racy.” That poison, he thought, would be only the more
virulent if the Union were broken into smaller divisions.3
Rufus King, George Cabot, and others of the less rabid
leaders of the Federalists also disapproved.

When the Massachusetts legislature met in June, William
Ely of Springfield introduced a measure which was passed
by a strictly party vote, to amend the Federal Constitution
so that representation and taxation should be apportioned on
the basis of free white population only. This, of course, would
never have been agreed to by the Southerners, who had been
induced to enter the confederation only on the basis of slave
representation. It would appear, therefore, that this resolution
had for its object the testing of Northern sentiment as to dis¬
union ; but every state, with the exceptions of Connecticut and
Delaware, which took no action, promptly rejected the proposal.4

1 Lodge, Cabot , pp. 337/.

2 Henry Adams, Documents Relating to New England Federalism , (Boston, 1877),

PP- 354 Jf'

3 Ibid., p. 365.

4 Morison, Otis, vol. I, p. 264.

23 8 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

Meanwhile the schemes of the disunionists had become public
and a lively newspaper controversy ensued. The Federalist
papers early did their best to sway public opinion, and such
journals as the Connecticut Courant fanned the flames of jeal¬
ousy between North and South over the question of slave repre¬
sentation. “Is there anything more scandalous in the abuses
of the British Constitution,” it asked, “than this mockery
of representation ? Are the rotten boroughs of England more
infamous than our negro boroughs ? . . . Who freed Virginia
and the Carolinas from the British troops when aided by their
slaves ? It was the men of the North — now destined vassals
of the South.” 1 Of course nothing was said about the rotten
boroughs in Connecticut, where the strongly entrenched
Federalist machine was opposing the suffrage demands of their
own “men of the North” when they happened to be political
opponents.

The Republican press fought the issue on every possible
ground from the first breath that was heard of it. As early
as January, the Independent Chronicle in Boston was expressing
its “indignation and contempt” with regard to the plot to
sow discord and to divide the Union.2 It was said that the
Federalists, finding their power dwindling in the North and
completely overwhelmed in the Middle and Southern States,
were taking this desperate means of retaining their control.3
The Eastern Argus of Portland, Maine, told the Federalists
that their downfall could be traced solely to their un-Republi-
can measures, to their “standing armies,” their Sedition Bill,
their theory of the public debt, their British treaty, and their
“absurd attempt to introduce ‘a Nobility in a hole/” together
with their “proud contempt of the Farmer and Mechanic.” 4

On the other hand, the Federalists made no secret of their
wishes. The newly founded New England Palladium supported
their views, and pamphlets and handbills were circulated to
spread them. Even these, however, admitted public apathy

1 Issue of May 23, 1804. Cf. April 4 and Sept. 7.

2 Issue of Jan. 9, 1804. Cf. April 9, 23, June 11, 28, Sept. 6, 13, Oct. 1.

3 Independent Chronicle , June 28, 1804.

4 Issue of Sept. 13, 1804. Cf. Sept. 20 and 27, Oct. 4.

PROSPERITY AND RUIN

2 39

toward those ills which only “the wise and rich and good”
seemed to perceive. “The Commonwealth was never in
greater danger,” these latter proclaimed — danger of losing
its sovereignty and of being taxed without its consent. “It
is in danger of passing under the dominion of men who are
strangers to the interests, and who deride the habits and insti¬
tutions of New England. . . . Massachusetts is a cypher in
the national councils, and the wishes and the policy of New
England are known only as they furnish themes for the invec¬
tive and the irony of those who rule the nation.” The Eastern
states are the “mere colonies of Virginia.” “The danger is the
more serious as it is not generally perceived, and approaches us in
the midst of prosperity and avocations, too happy to fear, too
busy to repel it.” 1 The plot, indeed, disapproved of by many of
the Federalist leaders themselves, met with no popular response
whatever, and the killing of Hamilton by Burr in the famous duel
ended the impracticable scheme. The Federalist party, how¬
ever, had been deeply implicated, and the answer of the people
came in the autumn elections, when Jefferson was reelected
President by every New England state except Connecticut.

New England was, in fact, exceedingly prosperous. In
spite of the hindrances to commerce during the French War,
a considerable part of the carrying trade of the world had fallen
into American hands and the greater part was carried by New
England ships, to the profit of the merchants and shipowners of
that section. Commerce with the British West Indies alone
increased from $2, 144,000 in 1792 to $9,700,000 in 1801. 2 The
peace proclaimed in that year enabled the European nations
to some extent to restore more normal conditions and to regain
their own colonial and other trade, so that complaints from the
West Indies again became frequent as to restrictions on secur¬
ing American goods — which were also heard after war was
renewed in 1803.3 For the first two years of the new war,

1 A Defence of the Legislature of Massachusetts or the Rights of New England Vindi¬
cated , (Boston, 1804), p. 4.

2 F. L. Benns, The American Struggle for the British West India Carrying Trade ,
iSij-iSjo, (Indiana University Studies, 1923), p. 20.

3 G. W. Jordan, The Claims of the British West India Colonists , (London, 1804),
pp. 39/.; S. Cock, An Answer to Lord Sheffield's Pamphlet , (London, 1804), pp. 52^'.

240

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

however, England appeared to be more inclined to respect
neutral trade, and American merchants again began to reap a
rich reward. Notwithstanding heavy losses, commerce flour¬
ished amazingly. America became almost the exclusive carrier
for the world, and of the million tons of American shipping in
1805 exactly half was New England owned.1 Under these
circumstances, the Federalists had a difficult task in trying to
persuade the people that Jefferson’s rule was dangerous or that
there was any practical need for dissolving the Union.

There were, indeed, grievances against England. There
were the restrictions on the West Indian trade, and the old
running sore of impressment of American seamen, which latter
we shall consider more particularly later. But, on the whole,
New Englanders were inclined to overlook such matters while
they were driving a roaring trade, protected to a great extent
by the British navy. Suddenly, however, the English ministry
threw a bomb the explosion of which echoed all along the Atlan¬
tic coast. English merchants had been looking with jealous
eyes on the absorption of their own business by Americans, due
to war conditions, and the English government saw danger
to the navy in the crowds of English sailors who escaped im¬
pressment for war service in English merchant vessels by
serving in American ships. Based on the old rule of 1756,
modified by the Orders of 1798 and 1803, it had been held that
goods might be carried by neutrals from belligerent colonies
to their own countries and if the domestic requirements for
admission were complied with, that the goods might then be
reexported thence to any place, like any other neutral goods.
The American merchants, however, when technically complying
with this rule, had been receiving a drawback from the custom¬
houses on goods reexported; and in May 1805 the British
decided, in a test case brought before Sir William Scott, — that
of the ship Essex, — that such goods had not complied with the
conditions of actual importation and therefore that the voyage
was not actually a “broken” one. The motive for the decision
was easily understandable ; but on the other hand, the United

1 Figures quoted in Columbian Centinel , Sept. 24, 1808. The total was 1,984,900,
of which New England owned 534,692. Of this, 426,000 belonged to Massachusetts.

PROSPERITY AND RUIN

241

States had a right to make its own regulations as to what con¬
stituted bona fide “importations,” and England undoubtedly
put a strained interpretation on her rights. In the ablest
defense of the decision which appeared in that country — and
which was reprinted during the Great War in 1917, when the ques¬
tion of neutral trade was again a serious one — James Stephen
said rightly that “behind the doctrine of contraband of war
and blockades there was a larger principle of which they were
only illustrations, the right of a belligerent to prevent the
neutral from giving assistance to the enemy.” 1

As the British, in accordance with the new interpretation,
rapidly began seizing American ships, wrath waxed hot in New
England. A town meeting at Salem, for example, in a memo¬
rial to Congress declared that they wanted peace, but would
have no hesitation in going to war if necessary.2 There was,
indeed, no option except war or submission. But on sober
thought it was seen that war would ruin the merchants, instead
of merely decreasing their profits. Popular feeling ran high,
but in Boston the merchants were able to control the form of
the memorial sent from that town, which was exceedingly
moderate in tone.3 George Cabot, who, much against his will,
had acted as chairman of the meeting, expressed his own views
in a letter to Pickering. No considerable party, he said, was
willing to take the consequences of war, and as for England,
whatever her motives might be, she was in reality defending
the whole civilized world, and would be justified in “saying
to neutrals, ‘If you will not help us in the battle, you shall not
hinder its success under a cover of neutral pretensions.’ ” 4 This
view, maintained again a century later, was that held by most
of the Federalists throughout all the complications, contentions,
and war of the next decade.

Even more severe upon neutral commerce than the decision
in the Essex case were the Berlin Decree issued by Napoleon

1 James Stephen, War in Disguise , (ed. 1917, London), p. vii. The American
answer at the time was by Gouverneur Morris, An Answer to War in Disguise , (New
York, 1806).

2 Independent Chronicle , Jan. 30, 1806.

3 Adams, Hist, of U. S ., vol. Ill, pp. 143/.

4 Lodge, Cabot , p. 353.

242

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

and the British Orders in Council, promulgated in retaliation
in January 1807.1 American national feeling was already
becoming highly incensed at the utter disregard paid to neutral
rights by the two principal belligerents, when the attack oc¬
curred in July upon the American frigate Chesapeake by the
British ship-of-war Leopard off the coast of Virginia. Many
British seamen at Norfolk and elsewhere had been deserting
and enlisting in the American service. Without orders from
home, the commander of the British squadron decided to take
matters into his own hands, dispatched the Leopard after the
Chesapeake when the latter sailed, overhauled her, forced her
to surrender, and took from her four of her crew, after killing
or wounding twenty-one others. Of the four taken as deserters,
one was hanged, one died, and the other two were eventually
restored.2

As soon as the news spread the entire country was in an uproar,
and for a brief moment even the bitterness of party strife was
lost to sight. A public meeting at Portsmouth, New Hampshire,
denounced the “unprovoked and dastardly attack” as “an
act of hostility against the sovereignty and Independence of
our country.” 3 At Newport one of the largest meetings held
in years, made up of members of both parties, expressed the
utmost detestation for the “late insult on our National Flag”
and pledged themselves to prepare for war.4 At Providence
a meeting resolved that the affair was “a flagrant insult on our
national honor,” and that if the government decided on war,
they would support it with their lives and fortunes.5 In an
article headed “The Spirit of Seventy-Six” the local paper
proclaimed that “No neutrality can now be tolerated. Those
who are not for us are against us.” 6 The Massachusetts Spy , at
Worcester, in an article headed “The Nation Insulted,” pledged
the people to extreme measures.7 The Connecticut Courant

1 Adams, Hist, of U. S ., vol. Ill, pp. 389 ff.

2 Ibid. , vol. IV, pp. 1 ff.; Mahan, Sea Power in the War of 1812 y vol. I, pp. 155 ff.

3 New Hampshire Gazette , July 14, 1807. The news first appeared in the issue of
July 7 under the head of “British Outrage.”

4 Newport Mercury , July 11, 1807.

6 The Phenixy July 18, 1807.

6 Ibid.

7 Issue of July 8, 1807.

PROSPERITY AND RUIN

24 3

spoke of it as a “wanton and unprovoked attack/’ and an
indignation meeting was held at New Haven.1 In the interior
parts of New Hampshire it was reported “that but one spirit
animated all classes, which was to rally round the standards
of the government, with the spirit of ’75, and shew the world
that we are but one people, and have but one interest when the
nation is insulted.” The Salem Gazette said that the public
mind was filled with resentment throughout the whole of Massa¬
chusetts. “One thing is certain,” it added; “an act of war
has been committed upon us,” and that measures to prepare
for the worst should immediately be taken and were strongly
desired by all who loved their country.2

In Boston, almost if not quite alone, was there hesitation.
At first the Federalists refused to call a town meeting. The
Republicans then held one, at which John Quincy Adams was
the only Federalist present, and passed resolutions denouncing
the outrage and pledging support to the government “in any
measures, however serious.” 3 Forced by public sentiment
to call a meeting of the town, the Federalists did so, and some
of the less extreme leaders, like Otis and Adams, were on the
committee that drew up the resolves, which were milder in
tone than those of the earlier meeting.4 The Essex Junto did
not take part, and such men as Cabot, Parsons, and Pickering
warmly maintained that the British were within their rights.5

Had war been decided upon at that moment, the country
would have been united in its support. Jefferson, however,
preferred suspension of commercial intercourse ; the nation
entered upon the most disastrous experiment in its history ; and
when war finally came in 1812 the country had become split
into bitter factions again. Meanwhile, through the press,
the Junto began to sway public opinion in favor of England.
The Salem Gazette , which had been so hot for war on July 10,
a fortnight later was deprecating the fact that the papers which
“come to hand teem with the resolves of meetings” throughout

1 Issue of July 8, 1807; Conn . Journal , July 9, 1807.

2 Issue of July 10, 1807.

3 Independent Chronicle , July 13, 1807.

K Ibid.) July 20, 1807.

6 Adams, Hist, of U. S.} vol. IV, p. 29.

244

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

the state.1 A series of articles by “Pacificus” contended that
war was neither necessary nor expedient, and rather defended
British impressment of sailors.2 The New England Palladium
pointed out that war would ruin the farmers and merchants,
and painted a gloomy picture of bankruptcies.3 The Ports¬
mouth Oracle stated that if war came it would not be on account
of the Chesapeake affair, which was only being used to inflame
the public mind, but that “the great cause of war, is the pro¬
tection of British seamen under the American flag.” 4 Pam¬
phlets taking the same ground began to appear, and as the
summer passed the indignation cooled, public opinion became
confused, and the discussion shifted largely to the question of
impressment.5

If the outrage on the American flag had shown, as in a light¬
ning flash, nascent American nationalism, Americans were
by no means united in feeling aggrieved at the mere exercise
in merchant vessels of the British claim to impress her own
citizens when found. The question, in fact, was by no means
simple, but belonged to that category which is the most difficult
of fair adjustment, that of a long recognized prescriptive right
which comes into conflict with new conditions. In the first
place, the British doctrine of citizenship held that allegiance
could not be transferred — a doctrine which the United States
also occasionally asserted. Moreover, with the connivance of
American consuls and other officials, deserting British seamen
could buy American citizenship papers for nominal sums. The
right to reclaim her citizens to their duty when found on foreign
vessels had been traditional in England, and had never been
questioned by the other European powers. The smallness
of the number of those deserting to Continental services, to¬
gether with the difference in race and language, made but
little difficulty in enforcing the practice. With the rise of the
United States to the position of the second maritime nation

1 Issue of July 24, 1807.

2 Columbian Centinel , July 29, Aug. 1, 5, 8, 12, 22, 1807.

3 Issue of July 24, 1807. 4 Issue of July 25, 1807.

6 [John Lowell] Peace without Dishonor, War without Hope, (Boston, 1807). In the

issues of The Repertory (Boston) may be found some of the strongest articles inspired
by the Junto.

PROSPERITY AND RUIN

245

in the world the situation became entirely altered. Not only
were deserting British seamen by thousands to be found on
American vessels, but the frequent impossibility of distinguish¬
ing between Americans and British, on account of identity of
race and speech, together with the conflicting doctrines of alle¬
giance and naturalization, made it impossible that the practice
should be exercised without endless errors and international
complications. Even when the British naval officers tried to
distinguish between the two nationals, — which was not always
the case, — many genuine Americans were bound to be caught
in the net. Here then was a wholly novel situation. On the
one hand, Americans of strong national feeling were not willing
to put up with what they considered an injustice and an insult
to national dignity simply because it had always been recog¬
nized by European powers. On the other hand, England,
fighting for her life, which depended on her naval man-power,
did not see why she should handicap herself by giving up a long-
established “right” because a new nation demanded it.1 As
Canning, the British Prime Minister, wrote to Monroe ; “These
rights existed in their fullest force for ages previous to the es¬
tablishment of the United States,” and it was difficult to con¬
tend that that latter fact should abrogate them.2

As to the extent of the practice and the numbers of American
seamen actually impressed, it was impossible to reach definite
conclusions at the time, and certainly is so now. Figures may
never lie, but the people who manipulate them do, and both
sides in America exaggerated their case. On the one side, lists
were compiled showing that thousands of genuine Americans
had been seized by the British and in many cases forced to
serve for years in the British navy. On the other side, we have
such statements as that made by James Lloyd in 1813, who
testified that he had been in active mercantile business in
Boston from 1793 to 1807 and a shipowner all those years,
and that in the entire time there was not a single passenger or
seaman taken from any vessel in which he was interested. Nor
since he had been in Congress, from 1807 to 1813, had he ever
received a complaint from any of his constituents with regard

1 Mahan, Sea Power in the War of 1812 , vol. I, pp. 114 j 2 Ibid., p. 115.

246 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

to impressment, although Massachusetts owned one third of
the tonnage of the country.1 In the latter year, a committee
in Nantucket reported that, although the island had maintained
from eight hundred to a thousand seamen for the past twenty
years, it had been impossible to find more than twenty cases
of impressed men, and of those only one had been taken from
a Nantucket vessel.2 A Massachusetts sailor swore in 1813
that he had followed the sea from 1783 to 1812, and that in all
that time no man or boy had ever been impressed from any
vessel he had been on, except one British seaman in 1799. 3
In 1813 a committee of the Massachusetts legislature, appointed
to investigate the question, reported that only one hundred and
fifty-seven men had been impressed from the whole state. On
the other hand, it was said in Salem with regard to this report
that more than the number named had been impressed from
that one port alone.4 A government report claimed that over
six thousand American sailors had been taken from American
vessels. James Madison, who was strongly opposed to the
British contention, wrote that between 1797 and 1801 over two
thousand cases had applied to the consul in London for relief ;
that of these eleven hundred and forty-two had been discharged
as not British ; and that it was his belief that not one in ten
or twenty who were impressed were British.5

The real question, however, was not one of numbers. When
Pickering wrote to Governor Sullivan that the number was
very small, John Quincy Adams rejoined by saying : “Suppose
the crime had been, in every instance, as by its consequence it
has been in many, deliberate murder, would it answer or silence
the voice of our complaints to be told, that ‘the number is
small’ ?” 6 It was a malignant crime, he said, to “a people
having a just sense of personal liberty and security.” 7 What-

1 Columbian Centinel , March 6, 1813.

2 Four of these were married in England, four were taken while in British ports, and
of the rest no details were known. Columbian Centinel , March 27, 1813.

3 Columbian Centinel , March 27, 1813.

4 Ibid., March 13, 1813; Baltimore Patriot, March 18, 1813.

6 All Impressments Unlawful and Inadmissable , (Boston, 1807), pp. 8 /.

6 A Letter from the Hon. Timothy Pickering , (Boston, 1818), p. 9; A Letter to Mr.
Harrison Gray Otis ... by J. Q, Adams , [1808], (Baltimore, 1824), p. 11.

7 Ibid., p. 11.

PROSPERITY AND RUIN

ever the facts may have been, it is nevertheless certain that, all
through the years leading up to the war and during that con¬
flict, the New England section, which owned one half of the
shipping of the country, made little complaint and on every
occasion minimized the importance of the issue. The cry was
always heard there that the number of impressments was
small and that most of the men taken were British deserters
anyway. The one object of the merchant-Federalist party
was to avoid war with England at any cost. Business was
profitable and, with no pride in the nation or interest in the
common man of their state, they regarded the matter as trifling
so long as the number of British seamen enlisting in American
ships was greater than the number of Americans taken out of
them — and this seems usually to have been the case. The
merchants, therefore, well content with the situation, belittled
the issue, and sarcastically asked whether we were to go to
war to protect British deserters.1

Meanwhile, there had been other causes of friction between
the United States and the leading two European Powers. In
December 1806, Monroe and Pinckney had negotiated a treaty
with Great Britain which secured certain rights for neutrals,
but yielded to the British on the point of impressment. Jeffer¬
son, on this account, refused to submit it to the Senate. At
the same time, no preparations were made to put the country
in a position to resort to force should negotiation fail. In May
the British had proclaimed a blockade of eight hundred miles
of the German, Dutch, and French coasts. Napoleon retorted
with the famous Berlin Decree in November. A year later
England issued an Order in Council prohibiting any direct
trade from the United States to any European country from
which the British were excluded, and ordering that all goods
exported from this country to any European country, except
Sweden, must be first landed in Great Britain and have duties
paid on them before reexportation. Napoleon then issued his
Milan Decree of December 1807, making any vessel lawful
prize which should touch at a British port. Obviously there
was nothing for the United States to do in self-respect but to

1 Cf. review of Madison’s pamphlet, in Boston Gazette , July 20, 1807.

248 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

declare war. But American self-respect in these years was at
the lowest ebb it ever touched. The Republicans had done
nothing to prepare the country for hostilities, and there was
little to choose between France and England as enemies. As
Jefferson said later, England had become “a den of pirates”
and France “a den of thieves.” 1

Meanwhile, the Federalist party had been badly defeated in
New England in the 1807 elections. Even Massachusetts had
elected a Democratic governor and a Democratic majority in
the legislature. Governor Trumbull of Connecticut was the sole
Federalist surviving the Democratic landslide to hold an impor¬
tant state office. In the United States Senate only Pickering of
Massachusetts and Hillhouse and Goodrich of Connecticut
remained as leading Federalists from that section, while in
the House Josiah Quincy was almost alone. Jefferson could
believe that his policy had won the support of the people, and
his policy had always been against war. In the critical posi¬
tion in which the country was now placed he determined to
try a substitute, one which America had experimented with
on several occasions and which he hoped might avert war,
which was dreaded by the Republicans not so much for its
horrors as for its effect on government. That substitute was
the Embargo. Its economic and political results reached far
beyond anything dreamed of by those who initiated the experi¬
ment. In this chapter we shall consider only the former, leav¬
ing the latter to be noted later.

There has never yet been any adequate study made of Ameri¬
can pacifism, but that the Americans are pacifists as a nation
has been evident from the very earliest days. The Civil War,
as well as others, proved that they could fight well and long
when there was no other escape, but militarism has never
appealed to them, and they have always avoided war when¬
ever possible. In the decade prior to the Revolution they
had made use of commercial coercion as a weapon and, to a
minor extent, on several occasions subsequently. It was not
unnatural, therefore, that Jefferson and the Republicans, who
represented the feelings and desires of the “plain people” of

1 Johnston and Woodburn, American Political History, vol. I, p. 295.

PROSPERITY AND RUIN

249

the country much more nearly than did the Federalists, should
resort to similar means to avoid hostilities, when there seemed
no other way out of the complicated and threatening situation
in 1807.

According to an Act passed by Congress and which Jefferson
signed on December 22 of that year, no American vessel of any
sort was permitted to sail from an American port destined for
any foreign country. Coasting trade was not, as yet, pro¬
hibited. The friends of the measure wrote that commerce
could not be carried on with safety before the Act was passed ;
that it would tend to preserve peace by bringing the British to
terms from economic necessity without resort to arms ; that
it would be far less costly than war in money, lives, and suffer¬
ing ; and that it would encourage domestic manufactures.1 The
opposition party, however, at once attacked the Administra¬
tion. Jefferson was charged with being under the influence
of Napoleon and of wishing to destroy American commerce.
Heretofore, in spite of all dangers and obstructions, trade had
been carried on, and profits had been great in proportion to
the risks. The Federalists, who represented the shipping
interests, felt that England had been singled out for special
hostility, although in their opinion France had been the earlier
and greater aggressor of the two. They also felt that their own
section at home, New England, was to be ruined for the sake
of saving the rest of the nation the expense or suffering of war.

Moreover, having embarked on an ill-fated policy, the gov¬
ernment was to find it necessary, throughout the next year or
more, constantly to pass supplementary measures to stop the
gaps and enforce the provisions of the original Embargo Act.
The first of these was passed within a few weeks, and called for
the giving of bonds and procuring of licenses by all coasting
vessels. Another, passed in February, prohibited certain
trade with Florida and Canada, even if carried on by land.
In April still another supplementary Act was passed, dealing
largely with matters of administration and adding many an¬
noying details, such as holding up for examination on the high

1 W. W. Jennings, The American Embargo , 1 807-1 809, (University of Iowa Studies,
1921), pp. 42/.

250

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

seas by armed vessels of the United States any ships merely
suspected of violating the Embargo. In January 1809 the
longest and most drastic of all the supplementary Acts was
found necessary by the government to prevent the smuggling
and other evasions of the law which the earlier ones had called
forth. In this the provisions regarding licensing were made
much more stringent, and almost absolute powers were given
into the hands of local customhouse officers. The President
was also authorized to use the army, navy, and militia to sup¬
press armed resistance to the enforcement of the several acts.

As far as any influence upon our European enemies was
concerned, the Embargo did little or no harm to either. Its
disastrous effects, like American produce during its continu¬
ance, were all consumed at home. It has been claimed that
its results in New England were not so severe as sometimes
stated in the past.1 It has also been claimed that they were
felt to a greater extent in Virginia and the rest of the South
than in New England, although opoosition centred in the latter
section.2

The facts, however, point to severe economic distress through¬
out New England as an immediate result of Jefferson's policy.
Skillfully as the Federalists may have taken advantage of the
situation to rehabilitate themselves, they could not have af¬
fected the political situation as forcibly as they did had not the
measure proven so universally unpopular; and it would not
have been so unpopular had not the distress been so general.
The total exports from Massachusetts in 1808 were only
$5, 100,000 as compared with $20,100,000 in 1807. Those of
Rhode Island declined from $1,600,000 to $240,000, and the
declines in the other New England states were in similar pro¬
portion.3 The losses in exports, which amounted to about
seventy-five per cent, were almost equally divided between
domestic and foreign products. In shipbuilding the tonnage
constructed in 1808 was but one third of that of 1807.

The losses were by no means confined to commerce and the

1This is Professor Channing’s view. Hist, of U. S ., vol. IV, pp. 387 /.

2 Adams, Hist, of U. S.y vol. IV, pp. 280 /.; Jennings, American Embargo , pp. 198 ff.

3 Jennings, op. cit., p. 214.

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Claret

Metheglin

Brandy

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Lemonade

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Library of Congress

252

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

shipping trades. The farmers felt the closing of foreign mar¬
kets, and a severe slump occurred in the prices of their products.
That of beans declined forty-one per cent, of potatoes twenty-
three per cent, of corn fifty-five per cent, of pork forty-three
per cent, with other declines of smaller amount in other prod¬
uce.1 On the other hand, the prices of many imported neces¬
sities and luxuries advanced by leaps. The newspapers and
private letters of the period are full of descriptions of the
disaster. “There is but little market for the productions of
our labor,” wrote one commentator in Rhode Island. “Our
crop of hay will but little more than pay for making. What
last year brought twenty, will this, bring but ten dollars.
Pork, at the last market of it, was worth ten cents, now it will
command but little more than five.” In general all crops and
produce were worth but half the previous ones. Even wood,
which had never been exported, had declined heavily in price
because the distress was so great among the commercial popu¬
lation of the towns that they could not afford to buy it. The
writer estimated that $100,000,000 worth of property was
embargoed and perishing in the United States for want of
export.2 Cabot wrote from Boston, only a few days after the
Embargo was proclaimed, that the evil effects were already
beginning to be felt, and that several thousand persons would
be out of employment immediately.3 It is not necessary to
multiply contemporary notices, many of which were, of course,
for political effect. The actions of the people, which will be
noted in the next chapter, speak louder than individual com¬
ments. A certain amount of smuggling across all borders
undoubtedly brought in some returns, and the enormous de¬
crease in imports naturally stimulated manufacturing for the
whole market. In fact, the Embargo did far more for the pro¬
tection of New England manufactures than any of the tariff
legislation yet passed by Congress. Although this was an
alleviating factor, it nevertheless involved a certain dislocation
in the labor market; and such transfers of capital and labor

1 Jennings, op. cit., p. 1 86.

2 An Address to the Citizens of Rhode Island , (n. p., Nov. 1808), pp. 10 /.

3 Lodge, Cabot , p. 474.

PROSPERITY AND RUIN

253

from one form of employment to another cannot be effected
without much anxiety and hardship for individuals, whatever
the statistics may show as to totals in volume of trade and
industry.

In addition to the actual economic distress caused, the
various Acts also inflicted petty hardships and an annoying
submission to the prying and overbearing conduct of officials,
to which the people were not used, and these added heavily to
the popular resentment. For example, in the local coasting
trade, the farmers of Greenwich, Connecticut, sold their
produce in New York, thirty miles to the west. Before they
could make that trip, however, the new regulations required
them to sail twenty miles to the east to Fairfield to get clearance
papers ! 1 In some cases owners of vessels had to travel several
hundred miles merely to get their documents signed. The
governors of the states were authorized to issue permits to im¬
port foodstuffs into one state from another, and it was claimed,
particularly in the case of Governor Sullivan of Massachusetts,
that these were liable to abuse. It was said that certain mer¬
chants were favored, and that the use of the permits also al¬
lowed smuggling on a profitable scale.2

Any law, as we have learned from prohibition, which comes
into violent conflict with the habits or prosperity of a consider¬
able part of the population, not only is difficult of enforcement
but breeds contempt for law. In fact, the parallel between
the struggle to enforce the Embargo restrictions, which proved
a losing one, and that to enforce prohibition, is instructive.
The Canadian frontier was naturally the scene of much of the
smuggling and of the fighting between the people and the
revenue officers. Rafts were floated down Lake Champlain,
loaded with produce and armed smugglers. One of these
rafts was said to have been half a mile long and to have carried
a bullet-proof fort and five to six hundred armed men on board.
At Middlebury a raft guarded by only twelve men was over¬
powered and captured by the government officers, but recap¬
tured by a hundred and fifty Canadians who came to the
rescue. There were constant encounters between the people
1 Jennings, op. cit p. 112. 2 Ibid., pp. 107 f.

254

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

and the revenue men, and at least one smuggler was executed
for resisting the law. Ships occasionally put to sea from small
ports after running fights with revenue cutters.1 At New-
buryport the officers were forcibly prevented by an armed
mob from detaining a vessel. As the months went by, opposi¬
tion and violence increased. “I did not expect a crop of so
sudden and rank growth of fraud and open opposition by force
could have grown up in the United States,” wrote Jefferson to
Gallatin in August 1808. 2 The passage was thus rapid from
the enactment of the laws to armed resistance and the call for
militia to enforce the will of Congress. New England had
passed almost as rapidly from great prosperity and the mere
clash of politics at the hustings or in print to the depths of an
economic crisis, a state of semi-rebellion, and threatened se¬
cession from the Union.

1 Jennings, op. cit., pp. 11 zfi. 2 Adams, Hist, of U. S.y vol. IV, p. 257.

CHAPTER XI

SECTIONALISM AND THE WAR

Pickering and Disunion — John Henry's Reports — Protests
against the Embargo — Secession Plot of 1808 — Rage of New
England against the Enforcement Act — Repeal of Embargo —
Threatened Secession — War with England — Opposition in
New England — Government Loans — Militia — Washington
Benevolent Societies

The fortunes of the Federalists, as we saw in the last chapter,
had been steadily sinking in New England until it appeared as
though nothing could revive them. It seemed that ‘‘the wise,
the good and the rich” had lost control of the government for
good, and as though the destinies of the New England common¬
wealths were to be entrusted solely to “the mob.” The un¬
popularity of Jefferson's Embargo policy gave the Federalists
an opportunity to regain their ascendancy — an opportunity
of which they were quick to avail themselves, but unfortunately
under the leadership of men who if not traitors were at least
narrow-minded and selfish political bigots.

Timothy Pickering, who was then Senator of the United
States and who had been the most ardent of the disunionists
in the plot of 1 804, made an immediate grasp at power. Within
a few weeks after the passage of the Embargo Act he was
already engaged in a traitorous correspondence with the British
minister in Washington, in an effort to influence British policy
for the benefit of his political party at home. Under his own
guidance, a decade earlier, such an action had been made ille¬
gal by Congress and subject to a fine of five thousand dollars
and a term of from six months to three years in state prison.1

1 Adams, Hist, of U. S ., vol. IV, p. 236.

2 56 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

Pickering must, therefore, have been fully aware of the nature
of the crime which he was committing. Ambitious to be presi¬
dent, and firmly convinced that the destinies of the United
States were safe only in his own hands and those of the small
group of extremists among the Federalists, he was ready to
break the laws, engage in rebellion, disrupt the Union, or take
any step which would tend to keep himself and his little group
in power. Probably those allied with him were influenced less
by personal ambition than by the insane belief that they alone
knew what was best for the country. In the early days of New
England leaders similarly placed could banish or hang those
opposed to them. It was the old spirit working under new
conditions.

Regardless of the law, therefore, Pickering entered upon his
negotiations with the British minister, Rose, and when the
latter left the country, arranged for a go-between in London,
who was to serve as an intermediary between the Federal
group and the British Government. Pickering assured the
minister that “our own best citizens consider the interests of
the United States to be interwoven with those of Great Britain,
and that our safety depends on hers. Men thus enlightened,
could they control the measures of their own government, would
give them a direction mutually beneficial to the two nations. ”
This Senator and ex-Secretary of State also informed the Brit¬
ish Government that whatever his country might do to pro¬
voke a war, England need not fear that there was any disposi¬
tion really to have one.1

He furthermore wrote a letter to the Democratic Governor
of Massachusetts, Sullivan, which he requested might be trans¬
mitted to the legislature. In this he claimed that the secret
motive behind the Embargo was Jefferson’s infatuation for
France; that the country was in imminent danger of being
betrayed and subjugated by Napoleon ; and that the maritime
states should immediately consider how best to preserve them¬
selves.2 Sullivan refused to place this communication before
the legislature, and replied in a public letter in which, unfor-

1 Adams, New England Federalism , pp. 366 /.

2 Adams, Hist, of U. S.} vol. IV, pp. 238 /.

SECTIONALISM AND THE WAR

257

tunately, he lost his temper and played into Pickering’s hands.
“If there ever was an attempt/’ he wrote, “in its nature and
consequence tending to rebellion and sedition, this is one.’’
Pickering’s whole effort, he declared, was directed to the dis¬
solution of the Union.1 Meanwhile, Pickering had sent a copy
of his letter to Cabot for publication, should the Governor
refuse to give it to the legislature, and Cabot published it in the
papers.2 Cabot estimated that fifty thousand persons would
read it in the next fortnight, which gives us an interesting in¬
sight into the extent to which prompt publicity was then
possible.3

The letter was copied throughout New England and instantly
created a furore.4 Pickering, already perhaps the best-known
Federal leader, was now in train to carry the party with him in
his extreme views. Cabot and some of the more conservative
leaders feared the danger of being known as a pro-British fac¬
tion. John Quincy Adams, Pickering’s colleague in the Sen¬
ate, felt at once the disunion tendency again in evidence, and
in an open letter to Harrison Gray Otis asked, “If the commer¬
cial States are called to interpose on the one hand, will not the
agricultural States be with equal propriety summoned to inter¬
pose on the other ? If the East is stimulated against the West,
and the Northern and Southern Sections are urged into colli¬
sion with each other, by appeals from the acts of Congress to
the respective States, in what are these appeals to end?” 5

Pickering, however, had adroitly played on the disgust which
the Embargo had aroused, and, in the next election, although
Sullivan retained the governorship by a small majority, the
Federalists regained the control of the legislature, and well in
advance of the necessary date elected James Lloyd to succeed
Adams in the Senate. Adams, who had voted for the Embargo,
at once resigned his seat. In Rhode Island the almost complete

1 Interesting Correspondence between His Excellency Governor Sullivan and Colonel
Pickering, (Boston, 1808), p. 6.

2 Lodge, Cabot, p. 381. There were alternative suggestions as to publication of other
correspondence with juggling of the dates.

3 Ibid., p. 387.

4 Pickering, Timothy Pickering, vol. IV, pp. 129 jf.

6 A Letter to the Honorable Harrison Gray Otis ... by John Quincy Adams, ed.,
(Boston, 1808), p. 5.

258 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

Democratic control was broken and a Federalist legislature
elected.1 Connecticut, always safely Federal, increased her
Federal representatives in the legislature by twenty-three, and
in the autumn Vermont elected a Federal Council.2

Meanwhile, the British Government had another source of
information as to the feelings of the Federalists, in addition to
that furnished by Pickering’s correspondence. In March 1800,
John Henry, an Irishman, made a trip from Canada to Boston
and wrote a series of observations to the private secretary of
the Canadian Governor, Sir James Craig, which Craig for¬
warded to Castlereagh in England. Henry had a good ac¬
quaintance among the socially elect, but it is not likely that he
came into possession of the secret plans — whatever they may
have been — of the inner circle of Federalist leaders. Never¬
theless, although his reports were based merely on general
conversation, they tally so well with subsequent events that
they may be taken as representing with fair accuracy the gen¬
eral drift of feeling. While in Vermont on his way south, he
reported that the “sensibility excited by” the Embargo “is
inconceivable”; that the roads were covered with sleighs
hurrying produce over the border; and that a clash with the
authorities would be inevitable. All feared a war with Great
Britain. “The bold talk publicly of an organized resistance”
to the Federal government, whereas the timid hoped for some
sort of armed truce or even union with Great Britain in case of
war, evidently following the Revolutionary precedent.3

In Boston he reported that, owing to the effects of the Em¬
bargo, “only men of large fortunes can now subsist. Every¬
thing by which personal exertion has been hitherto excited or
rewarded has ceased to exist and the commercial cities present
a dreadful spectacle of distress, despair and that abandonment
of principle which grows out of poverty and disappointment.” 4
The leaders were considering what measures to take, but “it
is only within a few weeks that the men of talents and fortune
could calculate on the co-operation of the mob.” At a meeting

1 Robinson, Jeffersonian Democracy , p. 81.

2 Ibid., p. 82; Columbian Centinel , April 23, 1808.

3 Report on Canadian Archives , 1896, pp. 38 /. 4 Ibid., p. 42.

SECTIONALISM AND THE WAR

259

which he claimed to have attended it was decided that all the
towns should send in memorials of protest to Congress, and
that committees of correspondence should act with the central
committee at Boston.1 Henry considered this “confederacy
of the men of talent and property” as important, though
he could not say whether it might be regarded as likely
to offer resistance to the Federal government in the event
of war.

The memorials which Henry had stated were to be prepared
and sent to Congress materialized through the spring and early
summer. Northampton led the way as early as March 14,
protesting against both the Embargo and the threatened war
with England, and complaining of the lack of employment for
seamen and the bankruptcies of merchants.2 Others followed,
and on August 9 Boston voted that the President be asked to
suspend the Embargo either in whole or in part.3 By the
twenty-seventh similar resolutions had been passed by more
than twenty other towns in the state, as well as by others else¬
where in New England.4 Most of these were comparatively
moderate in tone, and it remained for the debate and passage
of the Enforcement Act in December to drive the New Eng¬
landers headlong on the path toward nullification and threat¬
ened secession.

It cannot be stated with certainty to what extent the leaders
may have believed in the possibility or necessity of secession
at this moment. That there had been a definite secessionist
plot in the Northern States in 1804 is beyond question. Was
there one in 1808 and 1809? John Quincy Adams wrote in
1829 that he believed there had been, and that it was the key
to the whole policy of the Federalist leaders ; and this is the
view taken by his grandson, the distinguished historian of this
period.5 In his history he states unequivocally that “one by

1 Ibid., pp. 42 f. Morison thinks that these committees were merely the local
Federalist committees. Otis, vol. II, p. 14 n.

2 Columbian Centinel, March 30, 1808; Boston Town Records , vol. XXXV, p. 238.

z Ibid., Aug. 10, 1808.

4 A list of most of them, with the votes, is given in the Columbian Centinel, Aug. 27,
1808. Cf. issues of Aug. 10,-13, Sept. 14.

5 Correspondence between "John Quincy Adams . . . and Several Citizens of Massachu¬
setts , (Boston, 1829), p. 33; Plumer, William Plumer, pp. 374/.

260

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

one, the Federalist leaders gave their adhesion to the plan.” 1
Nevertheless, however strong suspicion may be, there is prac¬
tically no direct evidence. Considering his record on this
matter both before and after, we need not take Pickering’s own
disclaimer at the time with any seriousness.2 Otis, who was
always more cautious than Pickering and some of the others
in the inner circle of the Junto, wrote to Pickering saying that
“it would be a great misfortune for us to justify the obloquy of
wishing to promote a separation of the States,” but signifi¬
cantly added, “and of being solitary in that pursuit.” He
asked what might be expected of Connecticut, and whether a
convention to be held at Hartford of delegates from all the
commercial states might not be called to propose a mode of
relief “not inconsistent with the union of these states”; but
again added, “ to which we should adhere as long as possible.” 3

William Plumer, who had been in the plot of 1804 but had
since come to disbelieve in secession, wrote in January that he
never had felt greater anxiety for the country than at that
moment, and rather from internal dissension than from Euro¬
pean foes. “Numbers who, a few months since,” he wrote,
“would have revolted with horror at the fatal idea of the dis¬
solution of the Union, now converse freely upon it, as an event
rather to be desired than avoided.” 4 Judge Story wrote that
he thought there was “great probability that the Essex Junto
have resolved to attempt a separation of the Eastern States
from the Union ; and that, if the Embargo continues, their
plan may receive support from the yeomanry.” 5 At the same
time he wrote what was probably as near the truth as we can
get, that as to the spirit of rebellion in Massachusetts, “the
Junto would awaken it if they dared, but it will not do.” 6 It
would be strange indeed, considering the views of Pickering and
certain others in 1804 and 1814, if they should have altered

1 Hist, of U. S.y vol. IV, p. 403.

2 In a speech he said: “With regard to the union of the States, Sir, no one ever
more ardently desired it than I, and, notwithstanding the insinuations to the contrary,
either respecting myself or my fellow-citizens of New England, we all still desire it.”
Pickering, Timothy Pickering , vol. IV, p. 151.

3 Morison, Otis , vol. II, p. 5. Morison thinks there was no plot at this time.

4 Plumer, William Plumer , p. 368. 5 Ibid ., p. 369.

6 W. W. Story, Life and Letters of Joseph Story , (Boston, 1851), vol. I, p. 192.

SECTIONALISM AND THE WAR

261

them so as to support the Union at the time when the public
outcry was loudest against it.

With the passage of the Enforcement Act a veritable frenzy
seized upon a large part of the New England population. In
J anuary 1 809 the town of Rath passed resolutions which pointed
directly at revolution, and proposed the formation of “com¬
mittees of safety and correspondence” as in 1776. 1 A few days
later Gloucester followed, also advising the appointment of the
committees, and stating in the resolves that “some of the most
important provisions of the constitution have been violated
. . . that a standing army has been raised, and troops quar¬
tered among us in time of profound peace, to enforce at the
point of the bayonet the most tyrannical laws; that the 'en¬
croachments of the general government on the state govern¬
ments’ ought to 'be signals of general alarm’ — one spirit
ought to animate the whole , — and above all arouse the northern
states to a real sense of their danger.” 2 Worcester, Wiscasset,
Hadley, Springfield, Newburyport, Rowley, Cambridge, Bev¬
erly, Brewster, Augusta, Yarmouth, and other towns quickly
fell into line.3

The tone became increasingly violent. Oxford resolved,
with regard to the Enforcement Act, that “it is our solemn
opinion and conviction that the president of the United States,
by approving a law delegating to himself this dangerous and
unconstitutional power, has manifested a readiness for an act
of usurpation, and is no longer worthy the confidence of a free
and independent people,” who may have to return to “that
original right of self-defence which is paramount to all positive
forms of government.” 4 Boston presented a long petition to
the state legislature, pointing out that the national administra-

1 Columbian Centinel, Jan. 7, 1809.

2 Ibid., Jan. 14, 1809. The tone of many of these town resolutions is shown in the
continuation of the Gloucester resolves: “That we will mutually watch and protect
what little property we have still left — that we will use all lawful means ‘to arrest
disturbers and breakers of the peace; or such others as may (under pretence of author¬
ity from Goverment) go armed by night’, or utter any menaces, or threatening speeches,
to the fear and terror of the good people of this town ; and that we will ever hold in
abhorrence pimping spies and night-walkers, who strive to fatten on the spoils of

their suffering fellow citizens.” Ibid.

L 3 Ibid. , Feb. 1, 15, 1809.

* Ibid., Feb. 15, 1809.

i6i

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

tion “no longer conceal that the Embargo is ‘War in disguise/
and is soon to be followed by open War.” While professing
attachment to the Union, the petition affirmed that Massachu¬
setts “cannot admit the right, assumed by the National Gov¬
ernment of compelling her to abandon the Ocean, to renounce
commerce, to change the habits of her industry, and submit to
be the victim of a desolating policy.” It was resolved that all
who should assist in enforcing the new Act should be considered
as enemies to the people.1

When the legislature met in the same month, they gave
immediate attention to the matter, and their various actions,
including committee reports and a memorial to Congress, were
soon published in pamphlet form.2 The Enforcement Act was
asserted by them to be unconstitutional, and amendments to
the Constitution were demanded, among others the abolishing
of slave representation. Although allegiance to the Union was
proclaimed, it was evident that no such amendment could ever
be passed without dissolving the Federal bond.3 In an “Ad¬
dress to the People” the legislature undertook to defend their
acts, and complained that “politicians of yesterday, from the
back-woods and mountains vie with each other in the language
of insult and defiance” to New England, which section had
ceased to be of any weight in the national councils. The men
of Massachusetts would have to choose “between the condition
of citizens of a free state, possessing its equal weight and influ¬
ence in the national government; or that of a colony, free in
name, but in fact enslaved by sister states.” 4

In Connecticut, where the Federalist leaders were working
in close harmony with those of Massachusetts, the legislature
went a step further. Governor Trumbull had already been in
communication with the Secretary of War when the legisla¬
ture convened. As commander-in-chief of the state’s military
forces, he had declined absolutely to give any orders to the
militia to assist the customhouse officers in suppressing riots
or other disturbances arising from attempts to enforce what he

1 Boston Town Records , vol. XXXV, pp. 241 ff.

2 The Patriotic Proceedings of the Legislature of Massachusetts , (Boston, 1809).

3 Ibid., p. 127. 4 Ibid., p. 130.

SECTIONALISM AND THE WAR

263

declared to be an unconstitutional law.1 In his address at the
opening of the legislature he pointed out that when the Federal
government overleaped the bounds of its constitutional powers
it became the duty of the states “to interpose their protecting
shield between the right and liberty of the people, and the
assumed power of the general government.” 2 The legislature
then proceeded to adopt a series of resolutions approving the
governor’s refusal to employ the militia, and stating that it was
the paramount duty of the legislature itself to “assert the
unquestionable rights of this state [and] to abstain from any
agency in the execution of measures which are unconstitutional
and despotic.’’ 3 In Rhode Island the legislature declared the
Enforcement Act to be “unjust, oppressive, tyrannical and
unconstitutional,’’ and that a “dissolution of the Union may be
more surely — and as speedily — effected by the systematic
oppression of the government, as by the inconsiderate disobedi¬
ence of the people.’’ 4

Each of the three legislatures whose actions have just been
noted had made the suggestion, more or less openly, that they
would cooperate with others in any action called for; and as
we have seen, the Federalist leaders had mooted the point of
assembling a convention of the New England states. This
was not done, however, and in spite of all the froth on the sur¬
face, it was evidently considered that the time was not ripe for
such a drastic move. The violence of language used in the
memorials and resolutions must not blind us to the fact that
New England was not unanimous in its opposition. The Rhode
Island resolutions, for example, were passed by votes of seven
to four in the Upper House and thirty-five to twenty-eight in
the Lower. The New Hampshire Senate and House both
voted in favor of the Embargo.5 The numerous town resolves,
which Jefferson said made him feel the foundations of govern¬
ment shaken under his feet, were probably inspired to a great
extent from a central Federalist source.

1 The American Register, vol. V, 1809, pp. 172 /., 177.

2 Ibid., p. 177.

3 Ibid., p. 182.

4 Ames, State Documents on Federal Relations, p. 43.

5 Jennings, American Embargo, p. 148.

2 64 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

Nevertheless, the detestation of New England for the Em¬
bargo and all the supplementary Acts had become so over¬
whelming that the repeal of the measure by Congress was
finally forced in March 1809. Jefferson acknowledged him¬
self beaten, and said that, instead of using the peaceful weapon
of Embargo, “we must fight it out, or break the union.” 1 The
Non-Intercourse Act, which was passed as a temporary meas¬
ure, aroused considerable opposition in New England, but it
allowed commerce with all nations except France and England
and set the coasting trade entirely free. There was a rumble
from the legislatures again, and at the May session of that in
Connecticut, Trumbull clearly pointed to armed resistance to
the government. After stating that it would be well to con¬
sider what measures it would be expedient to adopt for “secur¬
ing the exercise of our future commercial rights” without the
embarrassments of an embargo or similar acts, he suggested,
with a pretence of reference to the disturbed condition of the
world, that Connecticut should supply its militia with an ade¬
quate amount of small arms and increase its field artillery.2

Three days after the repeal of the Embargo, Jefferson retired
from the presidency and gave place to James Madison. The
continued negotiations with the foreign belligerents which
marked the diplomacy of the new president up to the final break
with England belong to national history and cannot be detailed
here. In 1809 the folly of the Federalist leaders in taking up
the cause of the discredited British minister, Jackson, resulted
in their losing the influence which the Embargo had regained
for them, and Connecticut and Rhode Island more than made
up the former Republican losses, while Vermont elected a
Republican governor and legislature. By the following year
Massachusetts also had a Republican governor and legislature,
and New Hampshire was in Republican control.

The events of 1811 showed the same disunion and nullifica¬
tion spirit still at work among the Federalists. In January
came the debate in Congress over the admission of Louisiana
as a State, and in the course of it Josiah Quincy made his

1 Quoted by Jennings, op. cit p. 165.

2 The American Register , 1809, p. 182.

SECTIONALISM AND THE WAR

265

famous and carefully premeditated speech. In well-weighed
words he said that if the bill passed it would virtually dissolve
the Union, free the states from their moral obligation ; and
that, “ as it will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some,
to prepare definitely for a separation ; amicably if they can,
violently if they must.” 1

Almost at the same moment that the question of Louisiana
was again bringing secession to the minds of the Essex Junto,
the passage of a Non-Intercourse bill, directed against England,
led to threats of nullification. The former non-intercourse
measures had been dropped in the preceding May, but only
with the proviso that if either France or England abandoned its
hostile attitude toward neutrals, non-intercourse should be
renewed against the other. At the end of 1810, Napoleon, by
a characteristic lie, deceived Madison into believing that France
was to cease her measures against our commerce, though almost
immediately afterward every American vessel in French ports
was illegally confiscated. As a result of the misconception,
Congress passed in February a Non-Intercourse bill against
England, though they had come into possession of the real
facts before final passage of the bill. The reaction in New
England was immediate. At a grand caucus held in Faneuil
Hall in Boston, in March, the new measure was denounced in
time-worn terms as “unjust, tyrannical, and oppressive,” and
it was resolved that “the only means short of an appeal to
force” would be the election to all state offices of such men as
would oppose “the execution of laws, which if persisted in must
and will be resisted.” 2

The extreme views of the Essex leaders met with no popular
response, and the Democrats carried the election. For four
years, however, the Federalists had been preaching secession or
nullification as cures for any ills arising from measures of which
they disapproved. They had become thoroughly sectional-
ized and antifederal in outlook. They had sown the seeds of
fear and hatred against both the South and West. They had
preached the doctrine that the rest of the United States was

1 Edmund Quincy, Life of Josiah Quincy, (Boston, 1868), p. 10 6.

2 Quoted by Morison, Otis , vol. II, p. 24.

266

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

filled with tyrants jealous of New England and desperately
bent upon destroying her. Convinced that they alone knew
how to govern, that the New Englanders were a breed superior
to all others, and that there could be no glorious destiny for
America in which New England Federalism was not the pre¬
dominating influence, they had worked themselves into a state
of mind which bordered on megalomania. And they had done
so on the eve of the first great war in which the new nation was
to engage.

In the autumn of 1 8 1 1 the Republican newspapers through¬
out the country began to cry loudly for war against England.
Her refusal to abandon the Orders in Council, her interference
with our commerce, including a practical blockade of New
York, her malign influence over the Indians on our northwestern
frontier, and — as an afterthought almost — her impressment
of American seamen, were among the numerous causes alleged
for declaring war. It is true that our grievances against France
were quite as genuine and serious, but those were overlooked.
The Republican control of Massachusetts, so complete as even
to have turned Pickering out of the Senate, seemed to have
brought that state into line instead of its being under the thumb
of the “British faction.” In the Congress which convened in
November the younger group of Southern and Western “War
Hawks” — such as John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, Felix
P. Grundy of Tennessee, and Henry Clay of Kentucky — were
in the saddle. The West cared nothing for commerce, but it
cared everything about the Indian question, and the Westerners
felt that the only way to settle that was to drive the British out
of Canada. For that end war with Great Britain was essential,
and plausible excuses had to be found. These were to be dis¬
covered only, though amply, on the ocean. Nevertheless, had
all the other conditions remained exactly as they were, merely
substituting France for England as the owner of Canada, the
War of 1812 would undoubtedly have been fought against our
former ally instead of our former enemy, so little had the alleged
commercial reasons or impressment of seamen to do with the
real situation.

Realizing that, under the influence of the “War Hawks,”

EMBARGO BY EXPRESS.

BOSTON, FRJD/tT EVENING, APRIL 3, 1814.-6 deled.

Tit foltmi'm, j letter ii tbit moment banded me by Estprcf:.

HARRISON G. OTIS.

•* Mr. Caxhoun, of South Carolina, a member of the Com¬
mittee of Foreign Relations, has this moment informed Mr.
Quincy, that the Committee of Foreign RelaiibJia have decid¬
ed to la 7 a proposition for an EMBARGO on the table of the
House of Representatives to-morrow. This information may
be depended on from the respectability of the source front
whence it is derived, and the measure to be recommended, it*
is understood, meets the approbation of the Executive.

James Lloyd,
Josiah Quincy ,
James Emott.

w Wajhington, Tuefday, )

March 31, 18 12, 20* clock, P» M. y

The Honorable H G. Ofts, Boston,

Handbill Giving Notice of Embargo, 1812

Library of Congress

268

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

war with England had at last become imminent, Quincy sug¬
gested to the other Federalist leaders a policy of openly favor¬
ing it, in the belief that it would be thoroughly mismanaged by
the Republicans, who would be ousted in disgrace, and that
the Federalists would then be called on to replace them. As¬
tute from a wholly unmoral political standpoint as this sugges¬
tion may have been, the leaders had been too long and too
deeply committed to their pro-British policy to be able to adopt
it.1 From that day the path to the Hartford Convention was
straight. The debates in Congress dragged on through the
autumn, winter, and spring, and finally, on June 18, 1812, war
was declared against Great Britain.

A double war, one against both France and England, had
at times been loudly called for. It was said that the devil him¬
self could not tell which nation was the more wicked. The
alleged arguments for the war were inextricably tangled, even
by its ardent advocates. Grundy denounced impressment, but
kept his more violent denunciations for England’s hostile
influence over the Indians. There was loud outcry against
England’s depredations, but even while the debates were con¬
tinuing France was preying on our commerce even more ruth¬
lessly than her antagonist. Indeed, when war was finally
decided upon, no one knew exactly how or why. As Adams has
said, “so complicated and historical had the causes of war
become that no one even in America could explain or under¬
stand them, while Englishmen could see only that America
required England as the price of peace to destroy herself by
abandoning her naval power.” In a life-and-death struggle
with France, which was treating America quite as badly as
herself, England preferred if need be to go down fighting, rather
than to commit suicide by surrendering her strongest weapon
while the enemy was allowed to retain hers.2 In America the
Federalists convinced themselves, and tried to convince others,
that the country had been sold to France.

In March there had occurred an incident that served to
embitter the Massachusetts leaders still more against Madison.
John Henry, the English spy who had visited Boston and

1 Cf. Morison, Otis , vol, II, pp. 34 f. 2 Hist, of U. *S\, vol. VII, p. 8.

SECTIONALISM AND THE WAR

269

reported on affairs there, had returned to America in company
with a young person who called himself the Count de Crillon,
and succeeded in selling to the Administration for fifty thou¬
sand dollars certain papers which it was represented would
implicate the Massachusetts Federalists in a treasonable plot
against the government. The papers proved, after purchase,
to be unimportant documents, but were transmitted to Con¬
gress by Madison. A violent newspaper controversy followed,
in which the Federalists naturally had the best of the argument,
Madison’s action having been utterly foolish and unwise. The
expenditure of such a sum of government money for the pur¬
pose of besmirching the leaders of the opposition party was
inexcusable. The result, however, was to embitter yet more
the attitude of the leading Federalists, on the eve of a war when
the Administration should have done its utmost to conciliate
all sections and unify the sentiment of the nation.

When war was declared, Quincy and thirty-three other Fed¬
eralist Congressmen at once issued an address to their constitu¬
ents in which they stated that, although wrongs “very grievous
to our interests” and “humiliating to our pride” had been com¬
mitted against us, there was nothing which made the resort
to war either necessary or expedient.1 Yet Quincy had been
urging support of the war only a few weeks before, as a shrewd
bit of politics. In the May elections Massachusetts had again
chosen a Federalist governor, and on June 20 that official pro¬
claimed a public fast on account of the war declared against
the nation “which for many generations has been the bulwark
of the religion we profess” ! The Lower House of the legisla¬
ture, in an “Address to the People,” asked them to let the
sound of their disapprobation of the war “be loud and deep,”
and to let there be no volunteers for military service except for
defense.2 John Lowell, the spokesman of the Junto, declared
in a pamphlet that the war was unjust, and that it was the
duty of citizens to abstain from taking any part in it.3 This

1 An Address of Members of the House of Representatives ... to Their Constituents ,
(Hanover, 1812), pp. 6ff.

2 Adams, Hist, of U. S., vol. VI, pp. 401 /.

3 Mr. Madison s War , (Boston, 1812), p. 5.

270

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

was the attitude that was, to a great extent, adopted; and
although the Federalists controlled the greatest part of the
liquid capital of the country, the whole of New England sub¬
scribed less than one million dollars to the war loan of eleven
millions which the government had to float in May, whereas
the citizens of New York and Philadelphia took about a million
and a half for each city.1^

The governors of the states of Massachusetts, Connecticut,
and Rhode Island, when called upon to place the militia at the
service of the general government, all declined, on the plea that
it would be unconstitutional to do so.2 Town and county
meetings were held, and, at the one in Essex County, Pickering
initiated again his favorite plan for a convention, but Samuel
Dexter, breaking with the Junto, opposed it so vigorously that
it was finally dropped.3 At a convention held at Northampton
in July, representing fifty-three towns in three counties, the
war was declared to be “neither just, necessary nor expedi¬
ent,” and disunion was strongly suggested.4 Pickering’s
private letters of this month show clearly that he wished a
separation of the Eastern from the Western States, and that
he desired that a New England convention should take a lead
in the project.5 The Republicans quickly countered the con¬
vention at Northampton with another representing fifty-one
towns in the same counties, which strongly condemned the
attitude of the Federalists.6

For the most part, however, the voice of New England was
heard only in tones of angry condemnation and threatened
secession. At a convention of fifteen hundred Federalists at
Rockingham, New Hampshire, in September, a memorial
drawn up by Daniel Webster denied emphatically that there
was any cause for war. Impressment, he said, was the best of
the alleged causes, but the situation as to that had not changed

1 Adams, Hist, of U. S ., vol. VI, p. 207.

2 Ames, State Documents on Federal Relations , pp. 1 iff.

3 Cf. Morison, Otis, vol. II, pp. 60 ff.

4 Proceedings of a Convention of Delegates from the Counties of Hampshire, Franklin
and Hampdeii . . . (Northampton, 1812), pp. 8, 12.

6 Adams, New England Federalism, pp. 388 ff.

6 The meeting was held July 20. Democrat Extra , July 21 st, 1812, Broadside in
Library of Congress.

SECTIONALISM AND THE WAR

271

since the days of Washington, and the maritime states which
alone suffered from it did not consider it a sufficient grievance.
It was the voice of strangers “beyond the Western Mountains’’
that was raised so loudly, “while the fathers and brethren, the
friends and relatives, the wives and children of these very sea¬
men, — nay even the seamen themselves , deprecate this War,
as the greatest calamity that could fall upon them.” 1 “From
principle and habit,” Webster said, they were “attached to the
Union of the States. But our attachment is to the substance
and not to the form. . . . We shrink from the separation of
the States,” he added, but if separation should come, it would
be from an occasion like the present, when “one portion of the
Country undertakes to control, to regulate, and to sacrifice , the
interest of another.” In the Resolutions the convention
declared that the war had been undertaken in direct opposition
to the will of the people of the state.2

With the purely military and naval aspects of the conflict
this history need have little to do. No engagement of any
importance took place within the borders of New England, and
the part which that section played was singularly inglorious.
The main interest, indeed, lies in the policy of obstruction which
it was led to pursue by its leaders, and to which, perhaps, more
than to any other one factor was due the partial failure of the
war. If this chapter and the next are largely taken up with
this unpleasant side of the matter, it must not be thought that
the New Englanders were all traitors or that there was no
patriotism or national pride among them. It is not an easy
task to prescribe just what should be the conduct of a citizen
toward his government when he believes it to be engaged in an
unrighteous conflict, or how far the individual citizen may go
in hampering the efforts of the nation. Governments have
nearly always found it necessary, when possible, to abrogate
the right of free speech at such times, in order to present a
united front to the enemy. In the War of 1812, however, such
a large and powerful section of the New England population

1 Speech of the Honorable George Sullivan at the late Rockingham Convention , with the
Memorial , Resolutions and Report , (Concord, 1812), p. 23.

2 Ibid., pp. 26, 28.

2J2

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

was clearly against the war that the government did not dare
to interfere with the liberty either of the press or of individual
utterance, and the opponents of the declared national policy
carried all before them. That a majority was opposed to
“Mr. Madison’s War” is undoubtedly true; but that there
was a large minority loyally supporting the government is also
true. “A stranger to the existing state of parties in New Eng¬
land, but particularly in Massachusetts,” said the Independent
Chronicle in 1813, “would suppose, from reading the federal
papers, that the people were united to a man, in opposition to
the General Government and to the war . . . but the fact is
far otherwise.” It pointed out that in the May election there
had been forty thousand votes cast for Varnum, who supported
the war and the government, as against fifty thousand for his
opponent, Governor Strong.1

The Federalists, however, were better organized. They
constituted the great bulk of the wealthy social classes and the
clergy. They controlled by 1813 all the state governments
except Vermont, and were able to make their influence felt to a
far greater extent than their mere numerical majority would
indicate. That the love for the Union was strong enough to
overcome all the desires and plottings of such men as Pickering,
is evident from the course of events ; but the fiery speeches of a
Quincy still give the tone to the action of New England in
those days, whereas the silent patriotism of a hundred farmers
was of little influence then and yields no echo now.

So pronounced was the disaffection of the section that Eng¬
land was apparently hopeful that the Eastern States might
elect to remain neutral during the conflict, and when the Ameri¬
can coast was declared blockaded, the blockade was not ex¬
tended to New England, whose ports were thus left open by
the enemy. Moreover, when proclamations were issued pro¬
hibiting the importation of American products into the West
Indies, the New England ports were again excepted, and the
New Englanders had the profitable but invidious distinction of
being treated as friends by the national enemy.2

1 Issue of June 7, 1813.

2 Adams, Hist, of U. S., vol. VII, pp. 31 jf.

SECTIONALISM AND THE WAR

273

Nor, judging from the acts and speeches of the Federalist
leaders, was such a hope a fantastic one. In January 1813
Congress was debating a bill providing that, if any man over
eighteen enlisted in the military service, he should be retained
during the term of enlistment — an act that would affect the
relations of apprentices to their employers. Quincy denounced
it as containing an atrocious principle. “Touch not private
right,” he said in his speech on the floor. “Regard the sacred
ties of guardian and master. Corrupt not our youth. Listen
to the necessities of mechanics and manufacturers. Have
compassion on the tears of parents.” And he added that if the
New England states, but particularly Massachusetts, did not
enforce against the Federal recruiting officers the old state laws
against kidnapping and man-stealing, they “would be false to
themselves, their posterity and their country.” 1 The Repub¬
lican papers sarcastically but truly pointed out in comment
that impressment was assuredly kidnapping, but that, when it
was done by the British, Mr. Quincy and his party were left
wholly unmoved.

The New England newspapers now began to wage war on
each other in what was practically an open debate on the ques¬
tion of the dissolution of the Union. Throughout January
the Columbian Centinel in Boston ran a series of articles de¬
nouncing the Southern States. On January 13 it stated that,
although it was considered criminal to utter the truth, it was a
fact that “we are a divided people, and that the lines of our
political and geographical divisions are nearly coincident. . . .
North of the Delaware there is among all who do not bask or
expect to bask in the Executive sunshine but one voice for
Peace . South of that river, the general cry is ‘Open War, O
Peers!' There are not two hostile nations upon earth, whose
views of the principles and polity of a perfect Commonwealth
and of Men and Measures, are more discordant than those of
these two great divisions. There is but little of congeniality
or sympathy in our notions or feelings ; and this small residuum
will be extinguished by this withering war. The sentiment is
hourly extending, and in these Northern States will soon be

1 Independent Chronicle , Jan. 25, 1813 ; Columbian Centinel , Jan. 30, Feb. 3, 6, 1813.

274

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

universal, that we are in a condition no better in relation to the
South, than that of a conquered people . . . . We must no
longer be deafened by senseless clamors about a Separation of
the States. . . . The States are separated in fact when one
section assumes an imposing Attitude , and with a high hand,
perseveres in measures fatal to the interests and repugnant
to the opinion of another section. . . . Such a separation
alone is matter of substance. The rest would be matter of
form.” 1

Notwithstanding the expression of such views, the Federal¬
ists raised the cry in the spring political campaign that only if
they were elected could the Union be safe.2 Pickering's own
idea was that the separation should be between the original
seaboard states and the West, and this was warmly advocated
in a pamphlet which appeared in April,3 but in general the
division suggested was between North and South. In May the
New England Palladium urged that as all of the states east of
the Delaware had chosen Federalist legislatures except Ver¬
mont, the time was ripe for the formation of a “Commercial
League” among them that would be a “confederation” which
could “defy the enmity and machinations of the slave holders
and the backwoods-men.” 4 The Republican Chronicle , com¬
menting on this, said : if the division were necessary, let it be
openly arrived at; and that if the people could vote on it, it
was believed nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand
would be against it.5

Meanwhile, the government had again had to appeal for
funds, and had attempted to float another loan. New England
practically refused to subscribe, although the banks of that
section held most of the specie of the country. Boston took
only seventy-five thousand dollars, whereas Pennsylvania took
seven millions. The New England Federalists were forever
sneering at the “foreigners” in public life, but Astor, Girard,

1 Columbian Centinel , Jan. 13, 1813.

2 Ibid.y Feb. 20, 1813.

3 Thoughts in a Series of Letters in Answer to a Question Respecting the Division of the
States , (Boston, 1813). Cf. Independent Chronicle , July 29, 1813.

4 Quoted in the Independent Chronicle , May 29, 1813.

6 Independent Chronicle , May 27, 1813.

SECTIONALISM AND THE WAR

275

and Parish, three foreign-born citizens, subscribed to ten
millions between them.1

The Federalist press did its best to discourage subscriptions
and even suggested that the loan was an improper contract, not
binding upon the people for repayment, as it was made for the
support of a war which they abhorred. It was also suggested
that if the Eastern States would dissolve the Union, the loan
would never be paid.2 In fact, it was claimed that the Consti¬
tution had already been broken and was no longer binding. In
May the Massachusetts legislature adopted resolves declaring
that the admission of Louisiana was a violation of the Constitu¬
tion, and remonstrating against the war. In place of a vote of
thanks to Captain Lawrence for his recent naval victory, Josiah
Quincy, who had retired from Congress and was then a member
of the State Senate, secured the passage of a resolve penned by
himself that “in a war like the present, waged without justifi¬
able cause ... it is not becoming a moral and religious people
to express any approbation of military and naval exploits not
immediately connected with the defense of our seacoast and
soil.” 3 This action was bitterly denounced in Washington as
“moral treason.”

In November an event occurred in Vermont which echoed
loudly beyond the borders of the state. Some of the state
militia had been called to New York for the defense of the
frontiers of that state and placed under Federal officers. In
October Governor Chittenden in a speech before the legislature
declared that this was unconstitutional, and the legislature
adopted his view by a vote of ninety-six to eighty-nine. On
November 10, he issued a proclamation recalling the troops
within the limits of Vermont. They refused to obey; the
Governor’s representative was arrested, and a resolution was
introduced in Congress to prosecute Chittenden for treason.
The Massachusetts legislature at once pledged the support of
that state to the Governor and people of Vermont. This drew

1 Adams, Hist, of U. S.y vol. VII, p. 45.

2 New England Palladium , April 27, 1813.

3 Quincy, Josiah Quincy , p. 324; Ames, Documents on Federal Relations , pp. 65/.;
New England Palladium , June 22, 1813.

i76 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

forth, in turn, resolutions from the legislatures of Pennsylvania
and New Jersey denouncing both Massachusetts and Vermont,
the expression used in the New Jersey resolve clearly indicating
the passions which the times had excited.1 The federal rela¬
tions of the American states were fast threatening to descend
to the level of a free-for-all fight, and the spectacle of the
National Government and the several States yowling at each
other like Kilkenny cats had at least the merit of affording
amusement and comfort to the enemy. In fact, the Federalist
press in Massachusetts was openly advocating the making of a
separate peace with England by Massachusetts.2

The Federalist party by this time had changed completely
from the original principles of Washington, Hamilton, and the
other early leaders. With reference to the central government,
it had become strongly antifederal. With regard to the
Union, it was openly preaching secession. Instead of avoiding
foreign alliances, it had become practically allied to the British
government. With regard to another point it now made a
reversal of its policy, in that it organized secret societies to
forward its political aims — a policy that had been denounced
as strongly by the Federalists as by Washington individually.
In order to capitalize the influence of Washington's name, how¬
ever, and with no regard for consistency, the new societies went
by the name of Washington Benevolent Societies.

As we have seen, the Republicans had had their secret organ¬
izations in the last decade of the preceding century, clubs that
had been roundly denounced by Washington and the Federal¬
ists because of their secrecy and possible baleful influence. In
1809, in order to bolster their falling fortunes, the Democrats of
Rhode Island had organized Tammany Societies on the lines
of those which had already become popular in Pennsylvania
and New York. The first one in New England, that at Provi¬
dence, was soon followed by others in Newport and Warwick,
and were of considerable weight in the election of 1 8 io.3 It was

1 Ames, Documents on Federal Relations , pp. 63 ff. ; Morison, Otis , vol. II, pp. 64 /.

2 Adams, Hist, of U. «S\, vol. VII, p. 367.

3 M. W. Jernegan, The Tammany Societies of Rhode Island , (Providence, 1897),
pp. 10/.

SECTIONALISM AND THE WAR

277

probably to combat the influence of Tammany that the Washing¬
ton Benevolent Society was first formed in New York in 1808.1

So far as research has revealed, the first branch society in
New England was formed at Providence on August 10, 1810,
after several preliminary meetings had been held.2 This ante¬
dated by nearly a year the Washington Benevolent Society of
Berkshire County (Massachusetts), which was the first to be
formed in the neighboring state. This county society had its
local branches in Westfield, Springfield, Chicopee, Chester,
Blandford, Granville, Wilbraham, Longmeadow, Northamp¬
ton, Deerfield, and Becket.3 The Hampshire County Society
was organized some months later on the seventeenth of Novem¬
ber,4 and from that time onward county and town societies
were rapidly formed throughout New England, the movement
thriving especially in Vermont.5 The Boston Society, which
assumed the name of the Washington Benevolent Society of
Massachusetts, was organized February 22, 1812, and its con¬
stitution and objects may be taken as typical of all the others.
It was stated that the object was to cherish and inculcate the
sound principles of government laid down by Washington, and
to endeavor to “restore the reign of Washington principles and
measures.” Occasionally a fling was taken more directly at
“democracy.” The initiation fee of the Boston society was
two dollars, and the annual dues one dollar, which were sup¬
posed to go to the relief of unfortunate members, it having been
decided “to unite benevolence with patriotism” — an alluring

1 Dixon R. Fox, The Beeline of Aristocracy in the Politics of New York , (Columbia
University Studies, 1919), pp. 89 ff.

2 Newport Mercury, July 28, Aug. 10, 1810.

3 H. H. Ballard, “A Forgotten Fraternity,” Berkshire Historical and Scientific
Society, Collections , vol. Ill, pp. 288 /.

4 Washington s Farewell Address . . . Published for the Hampshire Washington Soci¬
ety , (New York, 1812). Library of Congress copy.

5 Among other societies of which I have found mention were those of Windsor,
Weathersfield, Harland, and Reading, Vt., and Cornish, Claremont, Charlestown,
Newport, and Plainfield, N. H. ( The Washingtonian , Feb. 27, 1815) ; Hanover, N. H.,
Lebanon, Lyme, Norwich, and Hartford, Conn., (Ibid., Aug. 8, 1814) ; County of Frank¬
lin, Vt., (Ibid., March 14, 1814); Gilmanton, N. H., (The Text-Book of the W. B. S.,
Concord, 1812, Library of Congress copy); Plymouth County, Mass., (Columbian
Centinel, Feb. 10, 1815); Nantucket, (Ibid., March 27, 1813); Charlestown, Mass.,
(Ibid., Feb. 27, 1813) ; Warren and Hamilton, Mass., (Hampshire Gazette, Dec. 28, 1814,
Dec. 6, 1815).

278 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

party measure.1 The society had its committees in each of the
twelve wards of the town, and was evidently a most efficient
vote-combing machine. The only list of names I have seen
contains about eighteen hundred members, including such
social and political leaders as the Otises, and such a varied
assortment of others as truckmen, hairdressers, ropemakers,
stevedores, blacksmiths, sailmakers, bakers, coopers, brick¬
layers, tailors, and so on — a list that speaks volumes, in view
of the social distinctions of the era, for the efforts the Federal
leaders were making to build up their machine. That the
social and financial magnates of the Federalist party in the
Boston of 1812, who loathed democracy from the bottom of
their souls, should hobnob and dine with such a motley crowd,
whose members they were forced to call “brother,” calls for
no further comment on their “benevolence.”

The great days for the Societies to make their public appear¬
ances were Washington’s Birthday and the thirtieth of April,
the anniversary of his inauguration. Later the Fourth of July
was utilized in some places. Dinners, parades, and speeches
were the favorite forms of celebration, and a somewhat elabo¬
rate ritual was developed, with banners and decorations.2 For
the celebration of the thirtieth of April 1813, in Boston, the
procession numbered over two thousand, including the Boston
Light Infantry, the Winslow Blues, the New England Guards,
and the Suffolk Rangers. Besides the members of the Society
there were many of the clergy, “the government of Harvard
University,” the Boston selectmen, two hundred and fifty
youths in blue-and-white uniforms, several bands of music,
and thirty-two standards and banners. The oration was
delivered in the Old South Church by Josiah Quincy. It was
on this occasion that the Society first displayed and carried in
the procession the gorget worn by Washington on the day of
Braddock’s defeat. This had been secured, through Quincy’s
efforts, from Mrs. Peters, a granddaughter of Mrs. Washing-

1 A Directory Containing Names, Places of Business . . . of the Washington Benevo¬
lent Society of Massachusetts, (Boston, 1813).

2 The parades and other features varied little in detail. E.g., Columbian Centinel,
May 1, 1813.

SECTIONALISM AND THE WAR

279

ton.1 This was an amusingly shrewd political move. The
affiliated societies had spread as far south as Maryland,2 and
the echo of Quincy’s cleverness was heard as far as Dixie. The
“mantle” of Washington, said the Baltimore Patriot , certainly
could never rest on these societies, but now his gorget, thanks
to Quincy, does; and they are therefore relieved of all suspi¬
cion, past, present, and future. In their own words, “If ever,
hereafter, we shall be overshadowed by the clouds of suspicion,
or overpowered by the shafts of calumny, it will be sufficient
to remember that we received the approbation of the family
of Washington” ! 3 Political bunkum varies little from age to
age.

It is no wonder that in one of the earliest attacks upon the
“ Benevolents” — the so-called First Book of Knaves — the
venom should be expended upon “that deformed and blear-
eyed hag, political hypocrisy.” 4 A more interesting feature
of this particular attack was the charge made that the Society
had bribed a Negro named Prince, a former Republican, to
become a Federalist and to work for the party for “two hun¬
dred pieces of silver” a year. Whether or not the charge was
true, it has its interest, for it would have been pointless had not
the colored vote in Boston become a factor worth considering
by that time.5 In the Second Book jibes were made at the
Washingtonians’ “benevolence” and an amusing comment was
made upon “Massachusetts velvet, which by interpretation
signifies tar and feathers.” 6 It was claimed that all the dues
were expended in making a show.7 By the time the Fourth
Book was published, the Boston society was evidently disin¬
tegrating, for it was noted that at the meeting on the thirtieth
of April, although the “tag-rag” were present, Otis and other

1 Columbian Centinel , April 21, 1813.

2 Baltimore Whig, Feb. 24, 1813.

3 Issue of April 23, 1813.

4 The First Book of the “ Washington Benevolents ” otherwise called the Book of Knaves,
[Boston, 1813], p. 3. This first book was followed by a second, 1813, a third, 1813, and
a fourth, 1814. In the last, a fifth was promised to appear, but I have been unable to
locate a copy and doubt if it was ever published. There are now original or photostat
copies of the first four assembled in the Library of Congress.

6 The First Book , op. cit., pp. 12/.

6 The Second Book, op. cit., pp. 6, 22.

7 Independent Chronicle , May 6, 1813.

28o

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

prominent members were not.1 By 1815 the notices of meet¬
ings anywhere in New England become rare and I have found
none later than that year.

The societies were evidently a powerful agency in bringing
out the Federalist votes during the war. Before elections the
papers contained many advertisements calling on the “Wash¬
ingtonians” to work for certain candidates, and there are
ample evidences of great activity on the part of members. As
representing the Federalist point of view they were, of course,
strongly opposed to the war, and the toasts and orations reveal
the spirit of the time. For example, at the meeting of the
Franklin County Society at St. Albans on Washington’s Birth¬
day, 1814, such toasts were drunk as: “The present Misrulers
of our Country — ye have made a covenant with death and
with hell are we at agreement,” and “The City of Washington
— How is the faithful city become an harlot.” The seventh
toast seems hardly appropriate to the celebration of the birth-
festival of the great Virginian : “ the Southern Slave-Drivers, —
bawling ‘Sailors’ Rights’ with a whip in one hand and Paine’s
Rights of Man in the other — too contemptible to merit exe¬
cration.” 2 The address, by the Reverend Mr. Booge, con¬
tained nothing on Washington, but was a violent diatribe
against the war, which, he said, was not for sailors’ rights, but
was waged by the South from jealousy of Northern commerce.
He threatened the secession of the New England states, assert¬
ing that the North was being enslaved by the “Southern negro
made nobility and plantation tyrants,” and the time had come
when New England must choose between “slavery and resist¬
ance.” 3 In fact, in most of the typical Washington Benevo¬
lent Society orations there is little of either Washington or
benevolence, but the object for which they were formed, and
which to a great extent they attained, is amply revealed.

1 The Fourth Book , op. cit p. 8.

2 The Washingtonian , March 14, 1814.

3 Ibid. , March 21, 1814.

CHAPTER XII

PEACE AND THE HARTFORD CONVENTION

Privateering — Trade with the Enemy — New Embargo —
Secession Again Threatened — Prosperity and Manufactures —
New England Absorbs Specie of Entire Country — Government
Loan — Conscription Act — - Hartford Convention — Nullifica¬
tion Resolves — End of the War

%

In spite of the embittered opposition which was shown in
New England toward the war, the struggle brought great
prosperity to that section as contrasted with the rest of the
Union. The wealth which it had poured into the Eastern
States, however, was derived in much smaller proportion from
the sea than would have been expected from the normal ac¬
tivities of the New England capitalists. Privateering un¬
doubtedly brought large profits to some, but such instances as
that of the privateer America, which netted her owner over
a million dollars in sixteen months, or that of the Yankee, which
captured over five millions in prizes, were very exceptional.1
Privateering, indeed, was carried on upon an extensive scale
and caused heavy loss to the enemy, who complained that
even the home waters around the British Isles were no longer
safe for British vessels, so infested had they become with
American privateersmen.2

But New England participated in this activity to a lesser
extent than in previous wars, Boston and Salem together fitting
out only about seventy privateers as against a hundred and
thirteen from New York and Baltimore.3 In the earlier years

1 Channing, Hist, of U. «?., vol. IV, p. 527.

2 G. Coggeshall, History of the American Privateers , (New York, 1856), pp. 302, 394.

3 Morison, Maritime History , p. 199. Maclay, however, gives considerably higher
figures for Massachusetts. E. S. Maclay, A History of American Privateers , (New
York, 1899), p. 506. The available data are unreliable and the estimates vary greatly.

282

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

of the contest a fairly lucrative commerce had been maintained,
but by 1814 this had been practically annihilated.1 There
was, however, a very considerable traffic carried on between the
various New England states and the enemy, either by direct
supply of British vessels, by the sending out of American ships
clandestinely, or through trade over the Canadian border by
land. It is impossible to estimate the total amount of this
trade even roughly, but the fact of its existence was notorious
throughout the war.2 In 1813 and 1814 there are frequent
mentions of it in the contemporary press. For example, we
read that “ the smuggling trade was never carried to so high a
pitch as at the present day” in Boston, a town to which smug¬
gling had never been a novelty.3 Shortly after, smuggled
goods to the value of twenty-five or thirty thousand dollars
were seized at Portland.4 A vessel from Boston, sailing under
false Swedish colors and cleared for Fayal, was taken by the
authorities for smuggling with Halifax.5 Ten thousand dollars'
worth of smuggled goods were captured at Buxton, Maine.6
A brig, called Portuguese but actually Boston-owned, was taken
at Savannah with a smuggled cargo worth twenty to thirty
thousand dollars.7 In March 1814 a mob in Boston beat a
customs officer who had seized a wagon loaded with British
goods, and in the same week at Cambridgeport a warrant was
issued against an officer for “highway robbery,” — the real
offense being seizing smuggled goods, — for which he was
landed in jail.8 In April there was a fight, in which several
persons were severely wounded, between smugglers and
officers, when the latter tried to detain a dozen sleigh-loads of
goods destined for Canada.9 In June, Tyler P. Shaw of
Northport, Maine, was tried for treason for supplying the
British.10 The Plattsburg Republican of June 18 had seven
different advertisements of captured smuggled goods condemned

1 Mahan, op. cit ., vol. II, p. 21.

2 Adams, Hist, of U. S., vol. VII, pp. 146, 368.

3 Niles Weekly Register , vol. V, p. 214.

4 Ibid., p. 380. 6 Ibid., vol. VI, p. 36.

5 Ibid., vol. IV, p. 16. 7 Ibid., p. 36.

8 Independent Chronicle, March 28, 31, 1814.

9 Ibid., April 4, 1814.

10 Ibid., June 27, 1814.

PEACE AND THE HARTFORD CONVENTION 283

for sale.1 At times the Washington Benevolent Societies
were said to be implicated.2 It is unnecessary to cite additional
cases, for the whole traitorous trade was well known at the
time and probably not overestimated as to its extent.3

It was with the intention of stopping as far as possible all
maritime trade with the enemy that Congress, in December
1813, passed a new Embargo Act. Although, in effect, some
trade still continued, it was made far more hazardous and
costly, and naturally this added immensely to the Federalist
hostility toward the Administration and all its works. Pick¬
ering felt that the time had at last arrived for New England
to take forcible action, and so wrote Samuel Putnam from
Washington, saying that Massachusetts should no longer
passively endure her grievances. “The time is arrived,” he
wrote, “when ordinary opposition will prove futile. God for¬
bid there should be any more supplications or simple remon¬
strances” “On the spot you can best judge for what the
people are ripe and what they will support.” 4 He added that
the New England states would now have to hold themselves
“in readiness ‘to right themselves.’” If Massachusetts led
the way, he believed that the other New England states and
New York would undoubtedly follow, and thought that a
convention should be held with representatives from all of
them.5 Town meetings everywhere condemned the embargo,
and at that held in Newbury the citizens declared themselves
ready “to resist unto blood.” 6 In the legislature, however,
although the suggestion of a convention was held to be legal,
it was stated that the time was not yet ripe, and the matter
was held over until the next legislature should meet after elec¬
tion. This referred the decision to the people, and although
the Federalists polled almost as many votes as before, the
Republicans added enough to theirs to cut down the Federalist
majority by about four thousand. On the other hand, in all

1 Niles W eekly Register , vol. VI, p. 304.

2 Independent Chronicle , March 31, 1814.

3 Cf. Documents Relating to Violations and Evasions of the Laws during the Commercial
Restrictions and Late War with Great Britain , (Bath, 1824).

4 Adams, New England Federalism , p. 392.

5 Ibid., p. 393. 6 Adams, Hist, of U. S ., vol. VIII, p. 6.

284 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

three states of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut,
the more rabid Federalists had added to their strength. The
result of the spring election in New York, however, was con¬
strued as condemning their plan for radical action.

Although the embargo was aimed at the shipping interest,
one of the strongest supports of Federalism, the prosperity
that had come to New England had been mainly derived from
manufactures since the beginning of the war. In January
1814 they were estimated to have grown to a value of fifteen
to twenty millions a year, and the New England banks were
thought to be drawing a half million dollars a month from the
banks of the South in payment for goods shipped. The spokes¬
man even of the Federalists declared money was a drug, and
the banks were at their wits’ end to know how to lend it.1
British bills were bought in large quantities at heavy discounts,
partly in payment for goods sent to Canada. In 1809 the
Massachusetts banks had held only $820,000 in specie. By
the middle of 1814 the figure had risen to nearly $7,000,000.
The banking capital of the New England section was about one
third that of the entire country, and for the most part in Federal
control.2 When the need for new national financing ap¬
proached, in the late winter of 1814, the danger of this situation
was fully realized in Congress. In the letter already quoted
from Pickering, he had expressed the idea that the citizens of
Massachusetts should be cautioned against lending any of
their money to the government or assisting it financially in
any way, and this had been the steady policy of the Federalists.3
In January the Independent Chronicle of Boston, in a long article
on this topic, quoted a statement by Pickering in which he
said, “Let the Federalists universally withhold their money
and the war must soon come to an end.” 4

When the new loan was opened for subscription in April,
the Federalist papers openly denounced it as an unsafe in¬
vestment, and advocated making its failure as complete as

1 Adams, Hist, of U. S., vol. VIII, p. 15.

2 Ibid.> vol. VII, pp. 387 f.

3 Adams, New England Federalism , p. 393.

4 Issue of Jan. 3, 1814.

PEACE AND THE HARTFORD CONVENTION 285

possible, in order to bring the government to a stand and end
the war by stopping supplies.1 The loan was largely a failure.
New England being responsible for that result, and the position
of the government became desperate. Controlling the major
part of the specie of the country and one third of the banking
capital, the New England Federalists had found the weapon
with which they were to bring the government to terms before
many months more. In August came the capture and burning
of Washington by the British, which sent a panic through the
nation. Practically all the banks outside of New England
suspended payment, the New England banks alone remaining
solvent by means of the specie which they had drained from all
the rest of the country. New England, however, would afford
no help to the administration, and the rest of the states had
now become unable to do so. Madison, nevertheless, for a
short time struggled on.

Throughout the year the Federalist papers became more and
more outspoken on the subject of a possible dissolution of the
Union. The governors of Rhode Island and Connecticut did
not hesitate to more than hint at it in addresses to their legis¬
latures.2 Massachusetts, in so far as the leaders of the domi¬
nant party were concerned, had definitely made up its mind to
end the war. In the autumn came Madison’s last effort to
strengthen the national resources in what had now become a
hopeless contest with the enemy at home as well as abroad,
and this effort produced the greatest crisis of the whole struggle
in New England.

Until the last year of the war, that section had suffered no
invasion by the enemy except for occasional minor incursions
on the coast, with small damage. In the summer of 1814,
however, the situation became more serious. In July, Sir
Thomas Hardy sailed from Halifax with a formidable force for
land operations and took possession of a considerable extent
of the Maine coast, and more active operations were threatened
on other New England borders. During that summer and
autumn, the governors of three states took such action with

1 E.g.y Boston Gazette , April 14, 1814.

2 Conn. Couranty March 8, Nov. 15, 1814.

286

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

regard to their militia forces as, whether or not due to an
intentional plot to prostrate the general government, certainly
had that effect, when combined with the financial crisis.1 On
the very day when Washington was captured by the British,
Connecticut withdrew her militia from the government serv¬
ice. In September, when the British were threatening Lake
Champlain, Governor Chittenden of Vermont refused to call
out any militia from that state, on the ground that he had
no constitutional authority to order them across the state
border.2

Only a small proportion of the Federal troops had been
detailed during the war for the defense of New England, owing
to the deadlock between the Federal and State Governments
on the subject of the use of the state militia. When Governor
Strong of Massachusetts at last ordered out about five thousand
of the state troops to protect the coast, at the time of the in¬
vasion of Maine, he stated to the legislature that, relying on
the Constitution, Massachusetts had paid her taxes with the
expectation of protection from the national government. As
she had not received any, it now behooved the New England
states to combine for their own defense. This was echoed in
a report made by the legislature, which then appointed a
committee to call a “conference” of the states “whose in¬
terests is [sic] closest.” 3

The national government was sorely in need not only of
money but of men as well. Americans have never volunteered
in sufficient numbers to make an efficient army in any consider¬
able war in which the country has yet been engaged. A certain
number always enlist as a matter of patriotism or adventure.
An additional number have been tempted by high bounties.
But in the War of 1812, the Civil War, and the recent Great
War, resort has always had to be made to drafts. When
Madison proposed such a measure to Congress, late in the
autumn of 1814, it met with immediate opposition in that body
and set New England in a blaze. The Act was finally passed,

1 Adams, Hist, of U. S ., vol. VIII, pp. 220 jf.

2 This was not a case of factious policy, so far as he was concerned. Ibid ., p. 223.

3 Adams, Hist, of U. S.> vol. VIII, p. 225.

PEACE AND THE HARTFORD CONVENTION 287

but instead of adding to the efficiency of the army, it ended the
war by the increased opposition it engendered in the North.

The tone of public meetings, of articles in the press, and of
discussions in Congress and the legislatures, testified to the
depth of passion which had been aroused. In the Connecticut
legislature not only the Federalists but twenty-three Republi¬
cans, among them the leader of the minority party, voted one
hundred and sixty-eight to six that the Conscription Act was
unconstitutional. They further called on the governor, in
case it should be passed, to assemble the legislature again in
special session, “to the End that opportunity may be given to
consider what measures may be adopted to secure and preserve
the rights and liberties of the people of this State, and the
Freedom, Sovereignty, and Independence of the same/’ 1 In
New Haven it was said that, if the law passed, it could not be
enforced in the state “at less expence than half the blood of
its citizens.” At a large meeting of the men of the western
Massachusetts counties of Hampshire, Franklin, and Hampden,
it was resolved that “we dare not submit and will never yield
obedience.” 2

In a “Letter to the President” which was widely published
in various papers, the writer addressed Madison, saying, “If,
by your violence and oppression, you drive New England off
from this confederacy, you must answer for it. And you have
already driven her to the very brink. One step more, and the
union of the states is severed.” 3 In another widely published
series of articles, entitled “The Crisis,” it was said that “the
Crisis is come. . . . Every evil which we now endure — every
danger which we fear, grew out of our want of foresight and
firmness then. . . . Had we commanded and not prayed . . .
we should not now see our cities tumbling into ruins, and our
vessels at our wharves, naked as the woods of winter. . . .
It is time to act. We have talked too long. . . . The suffer¬
ings which have multiplied about us, have at length aroused
New England. She will now meet every danger, and go
through every difficulty, until her rights are restored to the

1 Hampshire Gazette , Nov. 1 6, 1814. 2 Ibid., Nov. 23, 1814.

3 Ibid. , Nov. 1 6, 1814.

288

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

full, and settled too strongly to be shaken.” 1 In the third
article of this series it was demanded that New England make
a separate peace with England ; but even peace and the reopen¬
ing of commerce, it was claimed, would not avail if it should
leave New England “at the mercy of the Western States.”
“ If we submit quietly, our destruction is certain. If we oppose
them with a high minded and steady courage, who will say
that we shall not beat them back?” The time was ripe, the
author continued, and it would not do to wait until the United
States army was filled by conscription, when New England
should be beggared, and then have to fight against Federal
veterans for her independence.2

Many articles also appeared discussing the abstract question
of States’ Rights, taking the ground to be occupied a half cen¬
tury later by the South. In one of these, which first appeared
in Connecticut and was reprinted elsewhere, as was the custom,
we read that “the younger classes of our citizens who have
come upon the stage since the commencement of our Federal
Government, have many of them, considered it as one con¬
solidated and not a confederation of independent sovereignties.
This unjust conception has been the fruitful source of most of
the errors which have led to our present unhappy condition, and
nothing short of a correct understanding of our Federal Com¬
pact and the true principles of our civil and political liberty,
can restore” the happiness the country enjoyed under Wash¬
ington.3 Under stress of circumstances affecting their own
personal or party interests, the Federalists and Republicans
had each swung round a half circle and changed places with
reference to the nature and required strength of the central
government.

It was in the midst of excitement and passion, only faintly
shadowed in the few extracts quoted above, that the call went
out for the meeting of delegates from the several New England
states which has since been known as the Hartford Convention.
We may here reiterate a point to which we have frequently
called attention in both this and the preceding volumes, which

1 Hampshire Gazette , Dec. u, 1814. 2 Ibid., Jan. 4, 1815.

3 Salem Gazette , Oct. 21, 1814.

PEACE AND THE HARTFORD CONVENTION 289

is that there are always two or more parties among the people
on every question. When we speak of Massachusetts or New
England, for example, as being opposed to the war, what we
mean and all that we mean is that an effective majority was
opposed to it. Naturally, the party or policy which becomes
effective is the one to which the historian has to give the more
attention ; but there is always danger of losing sight of what
may have been very important minorities or policies which
did not fail of influence, although they did not win out at the
time. The characteristic feature in New England history
during the War of 1812 was the opposition and obstruction
offered to the national prosecution of the struggle by the power¬
ful Federalist majority, and consequently we have dwelt at
length upon the sayings and doings of that majority. Never¬
theless, during the whole war the Republican press and a con¬
siderable part undoubtedly of the members of that party sup¬
ported the policies of the Administration in Washington, and
took a nationalistic view of the Union and of New England’s
place in it. Such journals as the Independent Chronicle in
Boston were continually attacking the self-righteousness, con¬
ceit, and political ambition of the Federalists. As against the
steady campaign of abuse of the other sections of the country,
it pointed out that whereas the population of the Union was
nearly seven and a quarter millions, that of New England was
less than one and one half. “Is it not preposterous and absurd
then/’ it asked, “that these five states should expect to control
the other thirteen — or that less than one-fifth of the population
should control more than four-fifths?” It was admitted that
this argument could not convince the Federalists, who “assume
to themselves exclusively all the wealthy all the religion , and
all the learning of the nation,” and who considered that they
had the exclusive right to rule. The Federalists, after all, —
it pointed out, — were only a mere majority, and when peace
should come and the passions aroused by the war should subside
they would undoubtedly become a “very ‘contemptible’
minority.” 1

It is unnecessary to multiply such examples of extracts from

1 Independent Chronicle , May 2, 1814.

290

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

the opposition press, but in considering the actions of the more
extreme Federalist leaders it should be remembered that they
must have been tempered to a considerable extent by the exist¬
ence of a strong minority that was wholly opposed to their
ideas. With all the contempt felt for democracy and “the
people” by such men as Pickering and others, we yet find them
questioning continually what the people may “be ripe” for, and
how far they would follow a lead.

The extremists of lower position, such as the heady orators of
local town meetings or mere members of the state legislatures,
felt less responsibility and talked wildly, without thought of
future courses to be pursued. During the winter session of the
Massachusetts legislature the leaders, like Otis, felt themselves
in a difficult position. They had, indeed, been playing a
dangerous game. They wished to keep public feeling at high
pitch against the Federal Government, and yet sufficiently in
leash so that it should not be slipped until the leaders were
ready for overt action. Speaking of the difficulty, Otis wrote
to Noah Webster in May that it was impossible to say to the
legislators, “‘thus far may ye come but no further’, without
refrigerating the popular zeal,” and yet the leaders could not
sustain the town petitions and draft resolutions to afford a
relief which could only be obtained “by avowed nullification ;
for which those leading persons were by no means prepared or
desirous.” 1

As we have noted above, the question of holding a conven¬
tion, when first proposed, had been postponed until the people
should decide in the spring elections. By the time the spring
session of the legislature was held, the Embargo had been re¬
pealed by Congress and the convention project was again put
off. By autumn, however, the situation had wholly altered
for the worse by the occurrence of the various events we have
briefly noted above. In October the legislature passed a series
of resolves, one of which provided for the appointment of
twelve persons as delegates from Massachusetts to meet for
conference in a convention with delegates from the other New
England states, for the purpose of suggesting measures for the

1 Morison, Otis , vol. II, p. 90.

PEACE AND THE HARTFORD CONVENTION 291

common defense, and also for calling a constitutional conven¬
tion from all the United States to amend the Federal Constitu¬
tion.1 The governor was authorized to send invitations to the
other New England states to participate, and the delegates from
Massachusetts were chosen.

Connecticut was the first state to accept, the Assembly
passing a resolution to that effect by the overwhelming vote of
one hundred and fifty-three to thirty-six. In Rhode Island the
legislature had appointed a committee to report on the letter
from the Secretary of War to the governor with reference to
troops, and on the invitation from Massachusetts to join in the
convention. Both these matters were considered in a single
report which, after speaking of the oppressions of the national
government, said that “we are not alone in these calamities.
Our sister states of the south have been almost equally op¬
pressed and abused. They are beginning to assert their rights,
and with us they will never suffer our common rights, under
the Constitution to be prostrated by a government we have
ourselves created.” This is a note I find nowhere else in the
Federalist outpourings of the day. The resolution to accept
the invitation from Massachusetts and to appoint four dele¬
gates to attend was passed by thirty-nine to twenty-three, the
minority presenting a protest against the action, which was not
entered upon the minutes “on account of its indecorous lan¬
guage and foul aspersions on the motives of the majority.” 2

In New Hampshire the legislature was not in session, and the
Republican majority in the Council would not issue the call
for a special session.3 Nevertheless, the people of Cheshire
and Windham counties, where the population was overwhelm¬
ingly Federalist, proceeded in meetings to elect delegates. In
Vermont both governor and legislature were Federalist, and the
former’s attitude on the militia question has already been noted.
The actual invasion of the New England states, however, had
made him declare the war to be now a defensive one, and unlike

1 Morison, Otis , vol. II, p. 103. The seven chapters devoted to the Convention in
this volume give the best account there is.

2 Hampshire Gazette , Nov. 23, 1814.

3 Niles Weekly Register , vol. VII, p. 167.

292

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

the Massachusetts Federalists, he laid aside party distinctions
in order to prosecute it. The legislative committee which
reported on the invitation from Massachusetts were unanimous
against accepting it, and it was officially declined. A meeting
in Windham County, composed, it was said, “of a few Lawyers,
Doctors and Merchants,” chose a delegate, who attended the
convention at Hartford and was admitted. The Vermont
Secretary of State also went “without being sent by anybody,”
as the Vermont Republican said, but was denied a seat.1 The
convention was thus not representative of New England, but
only of its three southern states.

As the date of its convening, December 15, approached, the
newspapers were filled with articles regarding the objects which
it might or should attain. The Republican press naturally
attacked the very idea of holding a convention, and was almost
a unit in declaring its object to be the breaking of the Federal
Union. If this was good politics, the Federalists had certainly
opened themselves to the attack, not only by their acts and
speeches all through the war but by many of the articles which
now appeared in the Federalist papers regarding the conven¬
tion, by members of the extreme wing of the party.2

The Boston Gazette announced that “on or before the 4th of
July, if James Madison is not out of office, a new form of govern¬
ment will be in operation in the eastern section of the union.
Immediately after, the contest in many of the states, will be
whether to adhere to the old or join the new government,”
and it discussed the terms of the new constitution to be formed.3
A series of articles entitled “What is expected of the Conven¬
tion at Hartford?” by John Lowell, the mouthpiece of the
Essex Junto, was published in the Boston Daily Advertiser and
reprinted throughout New England. Although signed “An
Enemy to Separation,” and paying respect to the Union in the

1 Records of Governor and Council , vol. VI, p. 463.

2 Cf. F. M. Anderson, “A Forgotten Phase of the New England Opposition to the
War of 1812,” Mississippi Valley Hist. Assoc., Proceedings , vol. VI, pp. 176 ff.

3 Issue of Nov. 17, 1814. Suffrage was to be limited to free white native citizens;
no new states could be admitted without the unanimous consent of the old ; two thirds
of both houses of congress was to be necessary to declare war; the president was to
have a longer term but not be reeligible for office ; slave representation to be abolished ;
imposition of unlimited restrictions on commerce to be prohibited.

oon of the Hartford Convention
Original in the New York Public Library

PEACE AND THE HARTFORD CONVENTION

-93

opening paragraph, the articles nevertheless pointed directly
at disunion, and in fact claimed that the union was already
* dissolved or “at least so far suspended as to be the subject of
negotiation and arrangement,” because of the acts of the other
sections and not of New England.1 It was suggested that the
United States should not be allowed to collect taxes or enlist
men in New England during the remainder of the war unless the
government provided for the defense of that section, and also
that a declaration of neutrality might be wise.2

An article addressed “To the Members of the New-England
Convention,” which appeared in the Connecticut Courant in
December, may be quoted as an expression of one type of ultra-
Federal conceit and sectionalism. After stating that the New
Englanders have always been “a peculiar people” who were
“the wonder of the world,” it said that they fought alone the
first battles for independence and supplied more than half
the men and resources which supported the struggle throughout.
It was then prophesied that “this bold people” needed but
one century to control the destinies of Europe. “It was the
misfortune of this people ... to be united with a race of men
in every respect their reverse ; a mixture of all nations and all
colours ; united by no common bond of language and religion ;
ignorant, effeminate, and corrupt, who despise labour, and
destitute of everything which constitutes national or individual
wealth except what is wrung from the pitiful earnings of un¬
willing slaves. In a moment of unsuspecting generosity, while
the wounds were yet bleeding which we had received in their
defense, we admitted these men to a share in our Councils.”
Rut it soon became evident that they envied the glory of New
England and were bent upon destroying her. “They began
by infusing into our population a poisonous democracy, which
at once corrupted the fountain of life and threatened the whole
social system with convulsion.” The author of this diatribe
then recounted all the grievances of recent years, called for the
Spirit of ’7 6, and suggested rebellion.3 The above may be
considered as silly ranting, unworthy of quotation, but we

1 Conn. Courant , Dec. 6, 1814. 2 Ibid., Nov. 29, Dec. 13, 1814.

3 Ibid., Dec. 20, 1814.

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

294

cannot understand the past if we consider only its wisdom and
not its folly. Nor must it be ignored that the article was
given considerable space in one of the leading Federal journals,
at a time when contributed letters still largely took the place
of the modern editorial.

If we turn from what the public was expecting or suggesting
that the convention should do, to the opinions of its members
on the same topics, we breathe a saner air. Otis, who more
than any other man was responsible for the assembling of the
convention, always claimed that it was intended to save rather
than to destroy the Union, and that its two main objects were
to defend New England against the enemy and to serve as a
safety valve for the popular excitement.1 Otis may have been
sincere in these reminiscent ascriptions of motive, but his words
would have a truer ring if his own record were a little better.
In September, when the governor and the State Committee on
Defense took no action beyond the calling out of the militia
to save Boston from threatened British attack, many of the
leading Federalists said that nothing should be done, and that
the town should capitulate, as the British would respect private
property.2 The acts of the enemy at Norfolk and Washington,
however, were not reassuring to some of the younger Federal¬
ists, and a town meeting was called to adopt more resolute
methods of defense. Although Otis at the moment had a
letter from Admiral Bainbridge in his pocket, begging that the
forts in the harbor be strengthened, Otis did his best to oppose
the patriotic energy of the younger element. In spite of his
own statement in later years, his biographer is led to discard
defense as one of the main objects of the convention.3 Those
that were really in Otis’s mind at the time seem to have been
to give strong expression to the grievances from which his
section was suffering; to make some arrangement that would
enable the Federal taxes hitherto collected for military opera¬
tions in New England to pass to the local state treasuries, as
part of a scheme for self-defense ; and to secure, by means of a
constitutional convention, certain amendments to the Federal

1 Morison, Otis , vol. II, p. 1 10.

3 Ibid., p. 1 13.

2 Ibid., p. 99.

PEACE AND THE HARTFORD CONVENTION 295

Constitution. Of the latter, the one especially aimed at in
New England for some years past had had for its object the
abolition of slave representation in the Southern States.

It is needless to point out that the South would never have
yielded peacefully in abandoning the great compromise which
alone had brought her into the Union. It is difficult to see how
the Federalist leaders could have failed to realize that insist¬
ence upon the point could only have meant either the forcible
coercion of the South — which was never mentioned — or
secession by New England. Pickering, indeed, took a different
view, though a politically fantastic one. He would have forced
the Western States to secede, and then argued that the common
danger from the enemy would result in a closer union between
the Northern, Middle, and Southern States, and that the
latter two groups would have to concede whatever New Eng¬
land might desire in the way of constitutional changes, in order
to secure her effective good-will in the struggle against England.
We might smile at this wild scheme had it been suggested by
some farmer-statesman who had never wandered a half-mile
from his own acres, but it becomes almost incredible when
propounded by a man who was one of the leaders in New
England political thought, who had for years been a figure in
national politics, and had been Secretary of State at Washing¬
ton. The utter intellectual isolation of New England could
not be better shown. Because of changes in population, New
England was being outvoted. That Pickering could believe
that any remedy for the situation could be found by kicking
the West out of the Union and retaining the South, but mak¬
ing it voluntarily divest itself of the strength guaranteed it by
the Constitution, shows how little the Federalist leaders grasped
the forces underlying any sectional feeling but their own, or
those underlying the expansion of the nation.

The Essex Junto, with its extremist following in the Federal¬
ist party, undoubtedly wished for a more drastic plan of action
in the convention than did Otis and the other moderates. The
Columbian Centinel , indeed, treated the convention as though
it were itself being held for the purpose of drawing up a new
Constitution. Under captions similar to those it had used

296 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

in 1788, when the Federal Constitution was being adopted by
the several states, it announced the acceptance of the invitation
to attend on the part of Connecticut as the “Second Pillar of
a new Federal edifice raised,” and Rhode Island’s acceptance
as the “third pillar.” 1

As Dr. Morison has pointed out, the Union was in danger of
dissolution at the end of 1814, quite apart from the assembling
of the Hartford Convention. The British held a part of Maine
and were threatening an invasion by way of Lake George. At
the other end of the country an expedition was on its way against
New Orleans and — the Federalists, at least, believed — with
every prospect of success. Washington had been burned, and
the American navy destroyed. As he also points out, six states
outside the borders of New England had taken steps to form
state armies. The Federal government had exhausted its
resources and lost the confidence of the people. Under the
circumstances, any radical steps taken at Hartford, even though
only three New England states were represented, might well
have been the match to set the whole Federal edifice in flames.
It certainly strengthened the resolve of the national enemy.
In fact, its mere assembling was a menace, the force of which
could not but be known to the men who took part in it, who
had prepared the way by a constant fanning of discontent and
sectional feeling, and who had done their best to paralyze the
central government whose resulting impotency was one of the
alleged causes of the meeting. It was an enormous responsibil¬
ity, and one which they could not escape.

The convention met at Hartford on December 15, with
twelve delegates from Massachusetts, three from Rhode Island,
seven from Connecticut, and the two from New Hampshire,
the others who were to make up the final number of twenty-six
arriving later.2 Among those from Massachusetts were George
Cabot, H. G. Otis, Timothy Bigelow, Nathan Dane, and William
Prescott. Daniel Lyman was there from Rhode Island, and
Chauncey Goodrich, James Hillhouse, Calvin Goddard, and
Roger Sherman from Connecticut. It was, in fact, a notable

1 Issue of Nov. 9, 1814.

2 Theodore Dwight, History of the Hartford Conventiony (New York, 1833), P* 383.

PEACE AND THE HARTFORD CONVENTION 297

gathering of men of high character among the ruling aristocratic
class of New England. It is a fact worth noting that all but
four were lawyers.1 The delegation from Massachusetts
comprised approximately one third of the members, and among
these Bigelow was the only one who may be classed as an ex¬
tremist of the Pickering type. Leaders like Cabot, Dane, and
Otis might be counted upon to keep whatever action was taken
within fairly moderate limits, as far as possible.

As soon as the convention was organized, Cabot was
elected president, and Theodore Dwight of Hartford secretary.
Among the rules adopted at the first session was one which
aroused intense suspicion among the opponents of the conven¬
tion at the time, and which for decades after served them best
in their attacks upon the motives and acts of the members.
This was that “the most inviolable secrecy shall be observed
by each member of this Convention, including the Secretary,
as to all propositions, debates, and proceedings thereof, until
this injunction shall be suspended or altered.” 2

This was in accord with tradition, but was unquestionably a
tactical mistake. Considering all that had been said and
written about the disloyalty and desire for secession on the
part of the Federalists, and indeed, considering the writings
of some of their own prominent members, it would have been
the part of wisdom had they come into the open and shown, if
such were truly the fact, that they had nothing to conceal. It
is probable that such was the fact, and that we may take at
their face value the statements made later by leading members
of the convention still living in 1828, when the Journal of the
convention was published to put an end to public clamor as
to what had gone on. These stated emphatically that there
had never been any topic discussed except such as appeared
in Dwight’s minutes.

So far as the public was concerned, the results of the secret
debating was the publication of a “Report” on the result of
the conference.3 This reviewed the state of the nation under

1 Morison, Otis , vol. II, pp. 130 ff. 2 Dwight, op. cit.y p. 385.

3 The Proceedings of a Convention of Delegates , etc., (Boston, 1815). The references
are to the third edition.

29 8 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

the recent administrations, and recognized that some of the
more radical members of the party desired more drastic action
than had been taken or recommended, but advised a course
of “moderation and firmness” in order to save them “from the
regret incident to sudden decisions.”1 “If the Union be
destined to dissolution, by reason of the multiplied abuses of
bad administrations,” it continued, “it should, if possible,
be the work of peaceable times, and deliberate consent.” 2 It
then gave reasons for considering that any measures tending
to disunite the states in the midst of a war could “be justified
only by absolute necessity.” Unfortunately we do not possess
the debates on this point, but know only the conclusion reached.
It would have been well if the Federalists could have reached
such a sane and common-sense decision without the preliminary
of calling a convention in time of war, and have acted in ac¬
cordance with it during the preceding two years. The Report
also suggested, after discussing the questions of militia, draft¬
ing, and defense, that the states be allowed to assume their own
defense individually, and that a reasonable proportion of the
Federal taxes be apportioned to the states in which they were
collected for that purpose.3

The amendments to the Constitution of the Federal govern¬
ment that were next considered were such as had long been the
subject of controversy in New England. The first was to abolish
slave representation ; the second to prohibit any new state from
being admitted to the Union without the consent of at least two
thirds of both Houses of Congress ; the third and fourth limited
the power of the Federal government over commerce and the
declaration of war ; and the last had to do with the exclusion of
foreigners from holding office, and the limitation of that of the
president to one term.4 It was also resolved, should peace not
be declared and the defense of the states be further neglected,
that it would be expedient to call another convention to meet in
Boston in June, and Cabot, Lyman, and Goodrich, representing
the three states, were empowered to call such a meeting.5

1 The Proceedings of a Convention of Delegates , etc., (Boston, 1 8 1 5), p. 4.

2 Ibid., p. 5. 3 Ibid., p. 12. * Ibid., pp. 16 ff.

5 Ibid., pp. 21 /.

PEACE AND THE HARTFORD CONVENTION 299

The mild tone of the Report surprised the Democrats and
enraged the more extreme Federalists. The Federalist press,
however, to a very considerable extent altered its tone, and
much less was heard of immediate secession or of a separate
peace with the enemy. Within a few weeks after the conven¬
tion adjourned, Massachusetts and Connecticut appointed com¬
missioners to proceed to Washington to consult the Federal
authorities on the propositions which had been made as to
state defense. While these “ ambassadors, ” as they were
dubbed, were on their way, news came of the complete defeat
of the British at the battle of New Orleans, and almost immedi¬
ately after that of the treaty of peace between England and the
United States. It was, indeed, none too soon for the cause of
Union. After the adjournment of the convention some of
the towns continued to pass resolutions practically nullifying
the acts of the Federal government. Toward the end of Janu¬
ary, Newburyport resolved that the time had come when ‘‘what
is right, must be not only made known, but be made prevalent,”
and that “we have no hesitation in saying that we consider our
State Legislatures as the sole, rightful, and bounden judges
of the course which our safety may require, without any regard
to the persons still assuming to be the national government,”
and that “the laws of the United States shall be temporarily
suspended in our territory.” 1 In Reading the town resolved
that under God they would look only to the state governments,
and that thereafter they would pay no Federal taxes.2

Meanwhile, Congress had passed an Act which received the
President’s signature on January 27, authorizing pretty nearly
everything which the New Englanders had demanded as to
defense and the military. It did not allow the states to collect
the Federal taxes nor deduct any proportion from them, but
it did receive into the national army and place on the national
pay-roll units of troops raised by the states, which were to be
employed only within the limits of such states severally, except
with the consent of their governors.3

It is perhaps idle to consider what the course of events would

1 Hampshire Gazette , Feb. 8, 1815. 2 Ibid., Jan. 18, 1815.

3 Morison, op. cit.j p. 161.

300

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

have been, had the war continued. Would the second conven¬
tion have been called ? Would New England have made a
separate peace or seceded? It is probable that none of these
things would have come to pass, for it must not be forgotten
that even in the three states which took part in the convention
a considerable proportion of the population was opposed to the
policies and attitude of the Federalists, and that among the
latter there was a large element that would by no means have
followed their leaders over the brink of national suicide.1
Moreover, New Hampshire and Vermont would not have
joined in any such enterprise, and a confederacy of merely
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut would have
been impractical. That the majority of New Englanders had
been against the war from the beginning was an undoubted
fact, but, had they heartily cooperated with the rest of the
country and the national government after war was declared,
many of their later causes of complaint would not have arisen.
These were to some extent due, as was the growing bitterness
of feeling, to the policy and propaganda deliberately adopted
by the Federalist leaders. It may be conceded that national
feeling was a plant of slow growth and still in its infancy, but
there was such a feeling on the part of a large section of the New
England public, although not numbered among the “wise, the
rich, and the good.” In fact, the higher one went in New
England at that period, the narrower and more restricted —
for the most part — did vision become, from either the social
or the national standpoint.

Had the Federalists had their way, the United States would
forever have been limited to a fringe of states along the Atlantic
seaboard, dominated by New England. John Quincy Adams
was notably lacking in the judicial temper, — to put it mildly,
— and we ought not to consider too seriously his statements as
to the motives of the Federalists of the Convention era; but
there can be no quarrel with his verdict as to the role they had
forced New England to play in the war, even after making
all due allowances for them. “As to our beloved New Eng¬
land,” he wrote from London to William Eustis in July 1815,

1 Cf. Autobiography of Lyman Beecher , (New York, 1864), vol. I.

PEACE AND THE HARTFORD CONVENTION 301

'‘I blush to think of the part she has performed, for her shame
is still the disgrace of the nation — faction for patriotism, a
whining hypocrisy for political morals, dismemberment for
union, and prostitution to the enemy for state sovereignty.
You tell me they are ashamed of it themselves. I rejoice to
hear it. As a true New England man and American I feel
the infection of their shame, while I abhor the acts by which
they have brought it upon us.” 1

Democracy has as yet been on trial for too short a time to
determine with any degree of certitude whether it will prove
any more permanently successful than any other form of gov¬
ernment. We certainly can never again

. . . recapture

The first fine careless rapture

with which it was regarded as the beginning of the millennium
during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Nevertheless, if there has been much to cause sober pondering
as to what the effects of democracy are likely to be, not only in
the political but in the social and intellectual spheres, on the
other hand it is well not to allow one’s self to despair because
of intelligence tests or the emergence of raw mores which may
grate on the sensitive. In the case of the individual, we are
coming to realize, as psychologists plumb the depths, that he
is governed in his actions far less by rational motives than we
used to think or than he himself believes. There is the whole
array of “complexes,” of compensatory actions, the vast field
of the subconscious. In the larger sphere of social life, the life
of nations, it may well be that we deceive ourselves in a similar
way as to the ultra-importance of the role played by the
rational intelligence. As to entrusting the power of government
solely to a class composed of presumably the most intelligent
members of the community, the history of New England shows
us again and again, as a matter of practical statecraft, how
the “wise, the rich, and the good” have shown less collective
wisdom than the members of the despised lower orders, as well
as a more bitter class spirit, a narrower intellectual outlook, and
a less broadly human attitude toward life.

1 Writings , ed. W. C. Ford, (New York, 1913), vol. V, p. 329.

CHAPTER XIII

A NEW OUTLOOK, 1815-1825

Effects of Peace — Shipping — Manufactures — Agriculture
— The Tariff — Immigration and Emigration — Urban Devel¬
opment — Politics and Finance — Religious Societies — Over¬
throw of Old Order in Connecticut — New Constitution —
Separation of Church and State — Revision of Massachusetts
Constitution — Maine Becomes a Separate State — Missouri
Compromise

^ Peace had come with an unexpectedness that left the entire
country gaping. Moreover, owing to the complications of her
position in Europe, England had accorded terms that were far
more favorable than the military events of the conflict had
warranted the United States in expecting. The ground was
wholly cut from under the feet of the Federalists and other
opponents of the war, and the position of the Democratic party
greatly strengthened. If the peace was sudden, the psycholog¬
ical transformation of the country was equally so. For the
preceding twenty years America had been swirling with other
countries in the European whirlpool. The British Govern¬
ment and Napoleon had almost more direct influence on the
lives of the American people than their own government and
presidents. American political parties and passions had been
but a reflection of those in Europe. The Union had been
brought to the very brink of dissolution, not by purely domestic
questions, but by the lawless contentions of the leading powers
of the Old World. America had passed through a veritable
nightmare, in which her soul seemed to have been ravished
from her by powers three thousand miles away.

When peace came with the unexpectedness of a lightning

A NEW OUTLOOK, 1815-1825

303

stroke, it was as though America suddenly emerged from an
evil dream into the light of daytime actualities and activities.
She awoke to a whole new range of ideas which had nothing to
do with Europe. Domestic problems occupied her entire
attention. The distempered passions of the preceding two
decades subsided and an era of “good feeling” followed. At
the beginning of 1815 every eye in New England was strained
across the seas, following events in Europe with feverish inter¬
est, and our own great West was thought of mainly to be
damned or, if possible, to be forcibly kicked out of the Union.
By 1825 Europe was forgotten ; attention was focused on prob¬
lems at home. Along the Erie Canal, opened in that year,
New Englanders were pouring by thousands to develop the
new Northwest.

The end of the abnormal conditions produced by the war
brought about a severe dislocation of the economic life of New
England which was to have profound and lasting effect. Al¬
though all forms of business and industry at once felt the
change, they were affected in diverse ways. Shipping, which
had been the main producer of the accumulations of liquid
capital in the section, was at first stimulated by the return of
peace. As we have noted a number of times, the major part
of the American ships engaged in the carrying trade were Mas¬
sachusetts owned, and consequently the merchants of that
state shared heavily in the extraordinary increase in that trade
which occurred in the first two years of peace. Taking the
country as a whole, the exports rose from less than seven
millions in 1814 to nearly eighty-two millions in 1816, and
imports from less than thirteen millions to over one hundred
and forty-seven millions.1 The increase in exports was largely
due to the accumulation during the war of those American
products, particularly agricultural, which were badly needed
by Europe but which could not be shipped during the hostilities.
The changing nature of the American export trade, however,
and more especially the increasing importance of cotton, is
shown by the fact that whereas the domestic exports of Mas¬
sachusetts in 1818 were about five million seven hundred

1 Johnson, For. and Dom. Commerce , vol. I, p. 32.

j°4

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

thousand, those from Louisiana were nearly twelve and a quarter
millions.1 The tremendous increase in imports was largely
due to the dumping by British manufacturers of goods which
had accumulated in England — and which we shall speak of
again.

This situation was to a great extent temporary in character.
As we shall see further on, protective tariffs were passed, which
aimed at decreasing imports ; and with the decline in the
power of the Federal party the shipping interests lost powerful
support in the Federal Legislature. In 1 8 1 5 a series of reciproc¬
ity treaties were negotiated with England and other countries,
which injured the carrying trade in several ways.2 Even dur¬
ing the brief prosperity immediately following the announce¬
ment of peace, there was evident a distinct change in New
England’s interests. By 1816 the foreign trade of Massachu¬
setts had, indeed, risen nearly to the high figures of the ante¬
bellum year of 1811, but in New Hampshire it was only a little
over one third and in Rhode Island and Connecticut about
one half of that before the war.3 Manufacturing was beginning
to absorb both the capital and the attention of former mer¬
chants — a situation which was true to a greater extent, as
yet, in the smaller states than in Massachusetts. Even there,
however, the new conditions in shipping were bringing changes
in the geographical distribution of business, and the foreign
trade was rapidly concentrating in Boston. Such smaller
towns as Newburyport, Beverly, Salem, and Marblehead never
recovered from the effects of the war until they followed the
new trend into manufacturing.4 By 1815 Salem had but fifty-
seven vessels in foreign trade as against one hundred and eighty-
two nine years earlier, and her leading merchants were moving
into Boston. New Bedford alone, of the smaller ports, suc¬
ceeded in rising to a new prosperity by specializing in one
branch of trade, whaling, and became the leading whaling-port
in the United States.

1 Johnson, For. and Dom. Commerce , vol. I, p. 34.

2 Ibid., p. 36; K. Coman, Industrial History , pp. 181^.

3 Pitkin, Statistical View , pp. 54, 56.

4 Morison, Maritime History , p. 216.

Salem Ships Rome and Monk

From originals in the Peabody Museum

A NEW OUTLOOK, 1815-1825

305

Although the wealth of New England had been most con¬
spicuous and fluid as concentrated in the hands of the merchant
class, the great bulk of the population had always been, and
was still, in the period covered by this chapter, engaged in
farming. Even by 1820, when the new manufactures were
absorbing a considerable part of the labor supply, for every
fifty-one engaged in that pursuit and fifteen in commerce, there
were one hundred and seventy-two who were farmers.1 We
have already spoken of the difficulties of transport and markets,
which tended to keep agriculture on a low level of efficiency,
and the war had done little to alter these conditions. From
about 1810, however, there became evident the first beginnings
of a revolution in methods, that were comparable in the final
changes produced to those introduced by manufacturing.2
There had been practically no change in the methods of domes¬
tic economy of the farmer since the earliest days. The farm
was still to a great extent the almost self-sufficing unit it had
always been, and every farm raised just the same crops in
about the same proportions as all the others. The striking
changes that occurred belong to a slightly later period, but in
this one we may note the stirring of that new spirit which was
evident in so many different directions in society at this time.

The few Agricultural Societies which had been established
hitherto had been founded by men interested more or less
theoretically in improvements, and had not appealed to the
“dirt farmers,” in the absence of any markets that would
ensure a money return for the cost of experimenting. In 1811,
however, the Berkshire plan of societies formed among the
practical farmers themselves was inaugurated at Pittsfield,
and in the next fifteen years spread into nearly every county in
southern New England. Fairs and cattle shows became the
order of the day, and the new organizations served the need for
social contacts among the rural population as well as for the
exchange of views among practical men. Elkanah Watson of

1 W. P. Sterns, “The Foreign Trade of the United States from 1820 to 1840/'
Journal of Political Economy , vol. VIII, p. 3.

2 P. W. Bidwell, “The Agricultural Revolution in New England,” American His¬
torical Review , vol. XXVI, p. 684.

3o6 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

Connecticut, who was among the most influential leaders of
the time in working for improved agricultural methods and
conditions, exhibited three merino sheep at Pittsfield in 1810,
and although they occasioned a good deal of mirth and ridicule
among the farmers, the exhibition was the germ of the Berk¬
shire County Agricultural Society, whose regular annual
exhibitions began in the year following.1 Three of the merinos
had been imported from Spain in 1798 and given to a gentleman
in Cambridge who, unaware of their value, calmly proceeded
to eat them. The first introduced for breeding purposes were
brought over by Colonel Humphreys of Connecticut in 1802,
and it is said that the Cambridge epicure, having discovered
his error, paid a thousand dollars for a ram from the Hum¬
phreys flock.2 At any rate, the improvement in the breed of
sheep was the foundation of the American woolen industry,
and was indicative of the new spirit of enterprise at work.
The development of agriculture, however, was still awaiting
that of markets, and those in turn had to await the growth of a
manufacturing population.

We have already noted how the Embargo and the subse¬
quent war served almost as a prohibitive tariff would have done
to stimulate domestic manufactures, and how capital was
diverted from shipping to the production of goods, under stress
of the abnormal conditions. Nathan Appleton, for example,
who had been an importer until 1807, played a prominent part
in establishing the Massachusetts cotton mills. P. T. Jackson,
another new manufacturer, had been in the India trade. Fran¬
cis C. Lowell had been a merchant until 1810, when he found
his business so reduced that he also turned to manufacturing.3
These are but typical among numerous cases, and all the New
England states shared in this transformation. Even in Maine,
between 1806 and 1814 fifty companies were incorporated for
the manufacture of textiles, and in the latter year thirty were
authorized for many different purposes.4 In Connecticut,

1 Flint, “Hundred Years’ Progress,” p. 283.

2 Humphreys, David Humphreys , vol. II, p. 34 5.

3 M. T. Copeland, The Cotton Manufacturing Industry in the United Statesy (Harvard
University Press, 1912), p. 5.

4 C. D. Wright, History of Wages and Prices in Massachusetts , (Boston, 1885), p. 18.

A NEW OUTLOOK, 1815-1825

307

Humphreys had incorporated the Humphreysville Manufac¬
turing Company for wool manufacture in 1810, with a maxi¬
mum capital of $500,000, and this was rapidly followed by
many others.1 The number of plants that sprang up in Con¬
necticut was truly astonishing, as was the amount of capital
invested. Even in 1810 the output of the state in manufac¬
tured products was estimated from about six to nearly eight
million dollars, and this increased during the war. This was
surpassed in New England only by the output of Massachu¬
setts ; but the textile mills of Rhode Island had also developed
astonishingly. Almost all the mills had been for spinning
yarn only and not for weaving, but just at the end of the war
the power loom replaced the old hand-looms, and in the Wal¬
tham mill of Francis Lowell, who was the first to introduce this
new method, the entire process of manufacturing the cotton
into cloth was undertaken for the first time under one roof.2

The effect of the sudden peace with England upon the rapidly
developing manufacturing business of New England was ex¬
actly the reverse of that upon shipping. In fact, to a consid¬
erable extent the two were closely related, and the almost com¬
plete ruin which overtook manufactures was linked with the
sudden prosperity that came to shipping. As we have stated,
it was the almost total cessation of commerce during the Em¬
bargo and the war which caused the demand for home products
and also supplied the capital for the development of manufac¬
tures. When peace came and the ships of New England were
once more free to sail the seas, the way was open for foreign
merchandise to pour into the country. It came, indeed, in an
amazing flood, as the figures quoted above prove. The end of
the war in Europe had created problems there for the English
manufacturers, who found the Continental markets demoral¬
ized and sought an outlet at any cost for the enormous surplus
of goods on hand which had been brought about by the transi¬
tion from war- to peace-time industry. Manufacturers, in
order to meet their financial obligations, were forced to sell
goods at almost any price in order to realize cash. In addition,

1 Purcell, Connecticut in Transition^ pp. 123 ff.

2 Taussig, Tariff History , p. 29.

308 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

there was a deliberate policy of dumping on the American
market, in order to injure the new competition which was
threatening their future supremacy. In 1 8 1 6 Lord Brougham,
speaking in Parliament of the enormous exports to America,
said that “it was well worth while to incur a loss upon the first
exportation, in order, by the glut, to stifle in the cradle those
rising manufactures in the United States which the war had
forced into existence, contrary to the natural course of things.” 1

In the first year of peace America was inundated with Eng¬
lish goods to the extent of more than twice the normal amount
of consumption. These were sold at auction for excessively
low prices and on credits extending to even a year’s time. The
public indulged in an orgy of extravagance and bought reck¬
lessly, as they do after the end of every great war. Credit was
strained to tfie breaking-point; but for the American manu¬
facturer the situation spelled ruin. Many of the new plants
which had been built in New England and which had been
making handsome profits at war-time prices had been carrying
on their business on borrowed money. The collapse in prices
and the sudden turn of the consumer from domestic to foreign
goods left the manufacturers as stranded and helpless as fishes
caught above the tide line. Specie was hoarded or went to
settle foreign balances for imported goods. ( Banks closed down
or cut their loans heavily with little regard for the needs of their
clients. In Connecticut alone it was estimated that more than
a million dollars were suddenly withdrawn from circulation
either because of fear or because of speculation.2 Industry
came to a standstill.

Cotton manufacturing had another factor to contend with
in the sudden advance in price of the raw material, due to the
reopening of the European market, the staple rising from thir¬
teen cents in 1814 to twenty-seven within two years.3 A
memorial to Congress in 1815 estimated the number of mills
within thirty miles of Providence at one hundred and forty,

1 A. S. Bolles, Financial History of the United States , (New York, 1894), v°k II,
p. 359 > E- Stanwood, American Tariff Controversies in the Nineteenth Century , (Boston,
1904), vol. I, pp. 167/.

2 Purcell, Connecticut in Transition , p. 109.

3 Wright, Wages and Prices , p. 18.

A NEW OUTLOOK, 1815-1825

309

with a hundred and thirty thousand spindles, although prob¬
ably half of those numbers would be nearer the correct figures.1
Yet when Lowell and Appleton made a visit to the mill district
of Rhode Island, early the following year, they found that not
a spindle was turning except in the old Slater mill. Although
they advised the owners to introduce the power loom, which
would enable them to meet foreign competition even at the
lower prices, the introduction of cheap India cottons at this time
would have prevented this.2 As a matter of fact, the Waltham
mill, with its improved machinery and other advantages, was
the only one of any importance to survive the deluge of foreign
goods.

The distress of the manufacturers resulted in numerous
petitions being presented to Congress, praying for the protec¬
tion of the new industries. As a result a Tariff Act was passed
in 1816, levying duties of twenty-five per cent on cotton goods
for three years, and affording additional protection to cotton
manufacturing and other industries.3 As showing the lack of
influence of the manufacturing as compared with the mercan¬
tile interests as yet in New England, it may be noted that the
representatives of that section in Congress, with the exception
of those from Vermont, in the main voted against the measure.

There was not at that time much knowledge of the effects
of various rates of duties, and the tariff was not so effective
as it had been hoped in affording real protection. In Connecti¬
cut the state legislature gave additional assistance by exempt¬
ing the cotton and woolen mills from taxation for four years,
and their employees from the poll tax and militia duty.4 Nev¬
ertheless, imports continued on an enormous scale. Niles
estimated the excess of imports over exports for the years
1816 to 1818 for the entire country at over a hundred million
dollars, and also estimated that between 1815 and 1820 Ameri¬
can merchants defaulted on their foreign accounts to an equal
amount.5 Although manufacturing recovered more rapidly

1 [S. Batchelder], Introduction and Early Progress of the Cotton Manufacture In the
United States , (Boston, 1863), p. 59.

2 Stanwood, Tariff Controversies , vol. I, p. 141.

3 Ibid. , pp. 136 ff. 4 Purcell, op. cit.y p. 136.

5 Sterns, “Foreign Trade of the U. S.,” op. cit ., p. 38.

3io

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

than might have been expected, the country entered upon a
business crisis about 1822; and it was said at the time that as
many of the factories had been built on bank loans, “bank and
factory usually went over the same dam together/’ 1 Ninety
or more failures, mostly small, occurred in Boston during the
summer of 1822, and the specie in the banks of that city was
reduced from $936, 000 to $406,000 between January first and
July first, although their circulation remained stationary. It
is interesting to note that, of about $1,200,000 in specie ex¬
ported from Boston in that period, all but $100,000 was shipped
beyond the Cape of Good Hope.2

The crisis that occurred was felt in agriculture as well as in
business. Not only had the farmers taken part in the general
extravagance of the post-war period and bought more than they
could afford of foreign fineries, but they had also been specu¬
lating heavily in lands. From about 1820 their always narrow
markets had been somewhat seriously curtailed by the in¬
creased demand for cotton, which had been steadily making
itself felt from Europe. The greatly increased number of
ships employed in carrying cotton from the Southern States
to England preferred to make very low return-freights rather
than sail in ballast. Ships from Northern ports could not
compete with these, and the result was that both manufactures
and farm produce of the sorts formerly shipped from New
England to the South were now sent to the latter direct from
England.3

In 1820 the attempt to pass a new protective tariff was
defeated in the Senate, and although New England senators
were divided six to four in favor of the measure, the lingering
traces of Federalism were sufficient to prevent its passage.
Harrison Gray Otis, who voted against it, was publicly thanked
by his constituents in Boston. An anti-tariff meeting, held in
that city in October, was addressed by Daniel Webster, who
at that time — partly on constitutional grounds — was opposed
to protection, but who later was to change his position com¬
pletely. In a long analysis of the proposed bill and of “the

1 Review of The Prospect Before Us, in North American Review , vol. XVII, p. 190
[1823]. 2 Ibid., p. 205. 8 Sterns, op. cit., p. 41.

A NEW OUTLOOK, 1815-1825

American system” of producing at home all that the nation
consumed, the North American Review attacked both vigor¬
ously. It estimated that in New England one seventh of the
population was directly dependent upon shipping, and after
admitting that many factories were injured and that some had
failed, it asked whether it was reasonable that commerce should
be called upon to pay their losses. “Because our villages here
and there present a decayed manufactory, shall our cities be
made to exhibit a similar spectacle in ruined wharfs, decaying
warehouses, and rotting ships ? . . . Shall the sea shore be
deserted that the ignorance of some or imbecility of speculation
may be repaired ?” 1

This opposition of the New England seaports continued in
1824, when the tariff of that year was enacted; but by that
time the cotton industry had made great strides, and it was
the southern New England states which saved the bill as far
as that section was concerned. Maine had by then been
admitted as a State, so that New England counted twelve
senators, all of whom voted in favor of the measure except one
from New Hampshire and the two from Massachusetts. Had
the vote been full in the House, Maine, New Hampshire, and
Massachusetts would have given only three in favor and
twenty-three against, whereas Rhode Island, Connecticut, and
Vermont gave twelve in favor and only one against.2 From
this time onward New England opinion turned in favor of pro¬
tection. That opinion, Webster said, — speaking in the Senate
four years later, — had up to 1824 been “founded in the con¬
viction that on the whole it was wisest and best, both for her¬
self and others, that manufactures should make haste slowly.
She felt a reluctance to trust great interests on the foundation
of government patronage.” But after the policy of the country
had been settled by the Act of 1824, she had to decide whether
longer to resist what she could not prevent, or to accommodate
herself and her pursuits to the new policy.3

1 “Report of the Committee of Merchants and Others of Boston on the Tariff, ”
North American Review , vol. XII, pp. 62, 82.

2 Stanwood, Tariff Controversies , vol. I, p. 239.

3 H. A. Hill, Memoir of Abbott Lawrence , (Boston, 1883), p. 29.

312

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

Writing many years later, in 1 848, Abbott Lawrence combated
the notion, then becoming prevalent, that the protective tariff
system had been made by and for New England. He pointed
out that the earliest movement for protection for manufactures
had been started in the South and West in order to build up an
American market for their agricultural products, and that for
long New England had resisted the movement because “we
honestly believed [it] would greatly injure our navigation, and
drive us from our accustomed employments into a business we
did not understand.” Reluctantly as New England came into
it, however, the men of that section, he said, “soon learned that
with the transfer of their capital to manufacturing on a large
scale, they acquired skill and knowledge in the use of it ; that
so far from our foreign commerce being diminished, it was
increased, and that our domestic tonnage and commerce were
very soon more than quadrupled.” 1 The farmers also by
1824 had come to consider that possibly their own unfortunate
situation could be improved by the development of home mar¬
kets due to manufacturing and by the lowering of ocean freights,
so that the agricultural interest turned to the side of the man¬
ufacturing against the shipping.2

The economic changes following the war were beginning to
be felt not only in opinion and politics but in the life of the
people, though the full effects belong to a later period and only
their beginnings need be noted here. The rise of manufactures
began a veritable revolution in the domestic economy not only
of families in the smaller manufacturing villages and towns but
on the scattered farms as well. Home manufactures were
fated to give place to the cheap goods made by the factories
instead of by the families at the fireside, and we can trace the
beginnings of the change in this period. A somewhat more
immediate effect, however, was upon the employment of con¬
siderable numbers of the population. From the beginning,
two “schools” of manufacturing arose, based upon the rela¬
tions between the employers and their employees, which we
may call the Rhode Island and Waltham systems.3 In Rhode

1 H. A. Hill, Memoir of Abbott Lawrence , (Boston, 1883), pp. 150 /.

2 Sterns, op. cit ., p. 46. 3 Batchelder, Cotton Manufacture , pp. 7 3/.

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A NEW OUTLOOK, 1815-1825

3i3

Island, Slater had introduced the English system of employing
whole families, including the small children. The consequence
was that in that state the factory villages tended to be largely
made up of families who were wholly dependent upon their
work in the mills, and in some cases the parents were inclined
to live on the labor of their young children. This system also
frequently included payment of wages in orders on the factory
store instead of in cash. As a result, the families of the opera¬
tives came to have no resources of their own to tide over bad
times, and became wholly dependent upon their employers.
On the other hand, at Waltham wages were paid in cash and
the employees were accommodated in boarding-houses which
cost them about half the wages of adult female operatives.
This tended to preclude the employment of small children, who
could not earn enough for board. The operatives, therefore,
were to a far greater extent than under the other system mature
individuals, who had homes elsewhere and were not wholly
dependent upon the mill-owners.

The difference between the two systems became more marked
as time went on, the census of 1820 showing only the beginning
of the differentiation. At that time “boys and girls,” pre¬
sumably under sixteen years old, constituted forty-three per
cent of the textile-mill operatives in Massachusetts as against
fifty-five per cent in Rhode Island.1 It was only with the rise
of the large mill-towns in the next two decades that the factory
became a real problem in social life. In 1813, however, the
first step was taken to protect the welfare of the child worker
by legislative enactment. At the May session of the Connecti¬
cut legislature of that year it was enacted that children em¬
ployed in factories must be taught to read and write, that their
morals be attended to, and that they be required to attend
worship.2 The law was very vaguely drawn and probably was
merely to placate a certain amount of public hostility to the
factory system as a whole. There was no adequate means of

1 P. H. Douglas, American Apprenticeship and Industrial Education , (Columbia
University Studies, 1921), p. 57.

2 Legal Provisions Respecting the Education and Employment of Children in Factories ,
(Hartford, 1842), p. 4.

3H

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

enforcement provided, and apparently it was never invoked in
a single case.

The decade covered by this chapter also saw the commence¬
ment of the larger movement of immigration that was destined
to have great effect later upon the life of New England. The
industrial development led to a demand for labor just at the
time when emigration to the West was reaching hitherto un¬
dreamed-of proportions. Immigration was still but a trickling
stream as compared with the great floods of the thirties and
forties, and in 1825 only about fourteen hundred immigrants
came to New England from foreign ports.1 The emigration
from New England westward, however, was startling. The
war had brought a lull in the movement which in the preceding
years of peace had already begun to assume large proportions.
With the end of the struggle, and more particularly with the
hard times that followed it, great numbers were induced to
leave their homes and try their fortunes in the new lands.
The various economic ills had greatly increased the number
of debtors, as was the case after the Revolution, and many
people found themselves in sore straits. Moreover, the fer¬
ment of thought on social and religious matters which was to
alter society to a great extent in New England tended to drive
many who were impatient of the old restraints out into the
greater freedom of the West. Political reform and religious
toleration, not merely legal but social, were moving too slowly
at home for the more independent and restless spirits. This
was recognized at the time as among the potent causes for the
loss of population.2

Moreover, emigration was now not necessarily out to the real
frontier with its hardships and Indian dangers. Western New
York and Pennsylvania offered to the farmer or professional
man opportunities for making a new start, without the loss of
many of the advantages of fairly settled communities. The
real “West” had advanced farther, to the line of new states,
and the pioneers were pressing on to western Ohio, Indiana, and

1 W. J. Bromwell, History of Immigration into the United States , (New York, 1 856),
p. 41.

2 Cf. article from Dedham Gazette quoted by Purcell, Connecticut in Transition , p. 155.

A NEW OUTLOOK, 1815-1825

3i5

Illinois. The upper tier of townships in Portage County, Ohio,
were practically New England towns in appearance, social life,
and population, and the Western Reserve was peopled almost
wholly from Connecticut.1 Occasionally an entire town
moved from New England, preserving its church organization
and membership, and gave the name of the old town to the new
settlement, which became to all intents and purposes a bit of
New England thrown down in the wilderness.

There are no statistics available which afford even approxi¬
mate figures for the movement, but that it was on a vast scale
is clearly enough indicated by contemporary accounts and by
the serious alarm which it caused. Even more significant
than the numbers of the poor who were leaving their old homes
and depopulating New England villages were the character and
standing of many of the richer men who were doing the same
thing. To name a few of those who left Connecticut indicates
the loss in intelligence and leadership which the older states
were suffering. Gideon Granger, later Postmaster-General,
Judge Hugh White, Governor Daniel Dickinson, Oliver Phelps,
one of the greatest land-dealers of the day, Chief Justice Am¬
brose Spencer, General Peter Porter, Judge Frederick Whittle¬
sey, and others of like calibre, all emigrated to New York,
where they became prominent. Governor Samuel Huntington
went to the shore of Lake Erie. Stanley Griswold became Gov¬
ernor of Michigan Territory, and Horace Holley president of
Transylvania College. Even the Federalist Theodore Dwight
moved to Albany.2

Efforts were made to stem the tide, but without effect ; and
the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, just at the end of the
decade described in this chapter, acted like an open sluiceway
to drain off the population from New England.} Aside from
the changes wrought by this wholesale exodus, there were also
changes in the distribution of population within the old state
limits. As we have noted in Massachusetts, the smaller sea¬
ports were losing in wealth and size by the movement into
Boston. This same tendency toward an urban development

1 Mathews, Expansion of New England , p. 181.

2 Purcell, Connecticut in Transition , p. 153.

316 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

was already noticeable elsewhere. In Connecticut, owing
largely to manufacturing, people were leaving the country and
moving into the larger centres such as Hartford, New Haven,
New London, and Bridgeport, which were rapidly growing
while the smaller towns were standing still or actually decreas¬
ing in population.1 An urban wage-earning class was coming
into being, with an outlook — social, religious, and political —
quite different from that of the small farmer. The change was
marked by the passing of Boston as a town in 1822, when the
grant was made to it of a city charter.

The first election for mayor of the new municipality brought
to light an interesting change that had been going on within
the ranks of the Federalist party, which had survived as a
governing power in Massachusetts alone of all the New Eng¬
land states. Harrison Gray Otis had accepted the suggestion
that he take the nomination of the party as mayor, but to his
intense surprise a new faction sprang up, known as the “Mid¬
dling Interest,” composed of the mechanics and petty shop¬
keepers, who refused to nominate Otis and turned to Josiah
Quincy. As a matter of fact, neither secured a majority in
the election ; and the office, on a second balloting, went to
John Phillips, who was a Federalist but persona grata to the
“ Middling Interest,” which thus controlled the election.2 In
the state election for governor, the following year, Otis ran on
the Federalist ticket but was easily defeated by his Democratic
opponent. It is significant that both his participation in the
Hartford Convention and his wealth proved heavily against
him in the last, and what was generally considered the fairly
safe, stronghold of the Federalist party. Nothing could more
clearly indicate the trend of the times.

The alliance between the capitalists and the politicians is so
natural a one that, as we have shown in the preceding volumes
as well as this, it was in evidence from the very beginning of
New England history, and there had been many outbreaks of
resentment on the part of those outside the dominant groups.
The period since the adoption of the Federal Constitution had

1 Purcell, Connecticut in Transition , p. 13 1.

2 Morison, Otis , vol. II, pp. 248 /.

A NEW OUTLOOK, 1815-1825

3i7

been marked by the rise of a group of capitalists whose property
was in more fluid shape than the landed estates or timber and
shipping interests of the earlier days. After the beginning of
the new century the rapid development of banks, manufactur¬
ing plants, and insurance companies, all in corporate form,
brought a new influence into politics. This has been clearly
traced in the case of Connecticut, but the story could be re¬
peated in other states as well.

The earlier banks had been democratic in organization, but
after 1800 became much less so. (There was, for example, no
longer any provision limiting the number of shares which might
be held by any one individual, and the voting powers were also
altered so as to do away with the advantages hitherto possessed
by the smaller holders; and voting-strength came to depend
wholly on the number of shares held^ Moreover, the price of
bank shares rose, thus tending to make them a rich man’s
investment.*^ An examination of the names of stockholders of
the leading Connecticut banks reveals the close connection —
often the identity — of the stockholders and the leading politi¬
cians of the state. The Eagle Bank, for example, had among
its directors Senator James Hillhouse, Theodore Dwight,
Simeon Baldwin, Speaker Sylvanus Backus, Roger M. Sher¬
man, and Timothy Dwight. As has been said, “a stronger
combination in church and state or a group of more confirmed
office-holders would be difficult to pick.” Yet the same lines
of influence can be traced in other institutions.1

By the Act of 1803 the connection between politics and fi¬
nance had been made even closer by providing for the invest¬
ment of the surplus funds of the state in bank stocks, giving the
dominant party, in connection with the financiers, a powerful
weapon. The rise of the insurance companies brought a new
factor into the combination. Between 1803 and the end of the
war there had been organized the Norwich Marine Insurance
Company with a capital of $50,000-$ 100,000, the Middletown
Marine Insurance Company with a capital of $60,000-$ 150,000,
the Union Insurance Company with $100,000-$ 150,000, the
Hartford Company with $150, 000-$ 2 50, 000, the New Haven

1 Purcell, op. cit.y pp. \o\ff.

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

318

Company with $ 200,000 , and the Middletown Company with
$150,000-^300,000. These were all controlled by the same
group who controlled the banks and dominated the legislature.1)
It may be noted that in 1818 the position of a corporation as
such was greatly strengthened in the whole country by the
decision in the Dartmouth College case, which Daniel Webster
argued for his alma mater before the Supreme Court of the
United States. The New Hampshire legislature had attempted
to introduce certain changes in the management of the college
and its funds, but the Supreme Court decided that a charter
once given was a contract, and was therefore inviolate under
the Federal Constitution.2

In spite of all the opposition to the clergy in politics and the
decline in their power, they were still at this period the more
important partners in the political alliance of the various “in¬
terests,” and just as the banks, insurance companies, and other
corporations introduced changes in methods of exerting influ¬
ence by the capitalists, so the many moral and religious societies
which now began to be founded were used as political levers.
The Reverend Lyman Beecher discloses the process to some
extent in his autobiography. Speaking of the organization of
the “Society for the Suppression of Vice and Promotion of
good Morals,” he said that some of the clergy met in Judge
Baldwin’s office and invited some eight or more of the leading
lawyers to be present. “That was a new thing in that day,”
he adds, “for the clergy and laymen to meet on the same level
and cooperate. . . . The ministers had always managed
things themselves, for in those days the ministers were all
politicians. . . . On election day they had a festival. . . .
And when they got together, they would talk over who should
be governor, and who lieutenant-governor, and who in the
Upper House, and their counsels would prevail.” 3 The Mis¬
sionary Society, the Connecticut Bible Society, the Ministers’
Annuity Society, the Charitable Society, and others seem all
to have been mixed up with politics. The Bible Society and

1 Purcell, op. cii.y pp. 112/.

2 G. T. Curtis, Life of Daniel Webster , (New York, 1870), vol. I, pp. 1 63^.

8 Autobiography , vol. I, p. 259.

A NEW OUTLOOK, 1815-1825

319

Ministers’ Annuity Society, for example, used to meet at Hart¬
ford on election day. The lay trustees were the Federalist
bosses, no Republicans appearing on any of the Boards. The
leaders in the societies, lay and clerical, were the real rulers of
the state, and at the meetings religious and political business
went along merrily together.

Beecher was right, however, in noting an alteration in the
attitude of the people at large. “The mass is changing,” he
said in a sermon about this time. “We are becoming another
people. Our habits have held us long after those moral causes
that formed them have ceased to operate. These habits at
length are giving way.” 1 We have already noted the demand
from time to time for a new Constitution that should embody
the broader views as to suffrage and religious toleration, among
other ideas which had gradually been gaining ground. Events
were now to move rapidly in a direction that would make such
a change in the form of government possible. On February 21,
1816, a meeting was held at New Haven composed of Republi¬
cans and Episcopalians, for the purpose of establishing a new
opposition party which should harmonize various factions. As
a result of this movement a state ticket was placed in the field
by what came to be known as the American or American Toler¬
ation and Reform Party.2 The choice of Oliver Wolcott as
candidate for governor by the new party showed clearly the
breadth of its appeal. Although religious toleration was the
main plank in their platform, other popular issues were also
included. The new party gave the Federalists a close run, and
the following year actually succeeded in defeating them and
electing Wolcott in the heaviest voting ever cast in the state,
indicating the extent to which the public had been aroused by
the issues. The Tolerationists also secured control of the
Council and had a large majority in the Assembly.

In a bitterly partisan review of the proceedings of the legis¬
lature, a writer in the Courant complained that of the twelve
members of the Council only four had been members before,
and of the eight new ones several had never held even the office
of justice of the peace. There were six lawyers, four merchants,
1 Autobiography , vol. I, p. 262. 2 Purcell, op. cit p. 332.

3 20

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

and two doctors, of whom five only were Presbyterians, five
were Episcopalians, one a Baptist and one “doubtful.” These
figures are more indicative of the overturn in the state than
is the fact that of the twelve Councilors only five were Fed¬
eralists and the rest Democrats.1 In spite of this composition
of the Upper House, its aristocratic tendencies constantly
thwarted the will of the lower, and it was not until the
Tolerationists won an even more sweeping victory at the polls
in September that the way was open to carry out reform
measures, and when, in the spring of 1 8 1 8, they secured one
hundred and thirty-two seats to only sixty-nine held by the
Federalists, the revolution was complete.2 The way was now
open to secure a new Constitution for the state, and the legis¬
lature ordered that the freemen should meet on July 4 to elect
delegates to a constitutional convention to be held in August.

Great public interest was shown, and there was much dis¬
cussion of the questions at issue. The grievances against the
existing order and state of things were well summed up in a
pamphlet called The Politics of Connecticut , in which the author
demanded a constitution which should be an expression of the
public will, and complained of the limitations on the suffrage.
It “is the poor man’s poor defence and only protection against
the exorbitance and oppression of the rich,” it said; “and yet
the rich urge that the poor man’s exclusion from his solitary
privilege is the only security of their property against his
depredations.” 3 Religious disabilities figured largely in the
discussion, and particularly the disgraceful law under which
profession of Unitarianism was made a felony. Anyone law¬
fully convicted of professing this belief, as well as Deism,
Atheism, or Polytheism, could be declared incapable of holding
any public office, civil or military, and if convicted a second
time was disabled from suing or maintaining any action in law
or equity, acting as guardian of any child, or serving as executor
of an estate.4

1 Conn . Courant , June 16, 1818.

2 Purcell, op. cit., p. 367.

3 [G. W. Richards] Politics of Connecticut, (Hartford, 1817), p. 13.

* Ibid., p. 20. Cf. Public Laws of Connecticut, (Hartford, 1808), title LXVI, p. 17.

A NEW OUTLOOK, 1815-1825

321

The results of the reform movement were embodied in certain
statutes passed by the legislature, but more particularly in the
new constitution. The suffrage was broadened so as to include
all free white males twenty-one years old or more, who paid
taxes or served in the militia, were of good moral character,
and had been residents in their towns four months. The color
line had first been drawn by the legislature at the May session
in 1814, at which it was enacted that in addition to all other
qualifications for a freeman he must be “a free white male per¬
son. ” This distinction was maintained in the law of 1818, and
was the subject of debate in the constitutional convention of
that year, which voted the disfranchisement of the Negro by
one hundred and three to seventy-two. It may be noted that
the distinction was maintained in the constitutional amend¬
ment of 1845, and that it was not dropped until 1876.1 There
was practically no public discussion of this matter, but the
Negro was also disfranchised at about the same time in Rhode
Island under the law of 1822, which declared that thereafter
only white persons could be eligible as freemen.2

The most important reform achieved in the new Constitution
was the complete separation of Church and State. Every
denomination of Christians was given equal rights with every
other, no taxes for religious purposes could be collected by the
state, and any member of a church organization who wished to
withdraw from membership was no longer liable for any of its
expenses.3 Naturally there was a terrific outburst from the
clergy and members of the established church, yet even Lyman
Beecher, who opposed the change tooth-and-nail, lived to con¬
fess that it was “the best thing that ever happened to the State
of Connecticut.” 4 Although there was some temporary diffi¬
culty over finances, the church, so far from losing moral influ¬
ence, gained.

1 J. T. Adams, “Disfranchisement of the Negroes in New England,” American His¬
torical Review , vol. XXX, p. 545.

2 Ibid,, p. 546.

3 Greene, Religious Liberty , p. 489. Reports of the debates of the Convention may
be found in the Connecticut Courant , Sept. 8 and the following issues. Cf. also Journal
of the Proceedings of the Convention of Delegates, (Hartford, 1873).

4 Autobiography, vol. I, p. 344.

322

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

That was not foreseen at the time, however; and all those
who had constituted the ruling powers in church and politics
in earlier days fought against what they considered the ruin of
the commonwealth as well as the end of their own influence —
two things which those in authority are very apt to consider as
conveniently identical. Federalists fairly foamed with rage
at what they declared to be the unseemly haste with which the
Constitution was to be framed and passed upon. It is “un¬
paralleled in the proceedings of any nation,” wrote one, “unless
it may be revolutionary France, in the maddest part of her
bloody career.” 1 Although it had been provided that the
Constitution should be ratified by a mere majority instead of
two thirds of the people, it secured a majority of only fifteen
hundred and fifty-four votes out of a total of twenty-six thou¬
sand two hundred and eighty-two,2 and it was claimed that
many of these were fraudulent. Nevertheless, the adoption
marked a new era and the culmination of the movement which
had started in 1776, and which had been balked and delayed by
the entrenched powers of the Congregational church and the
old ruling families.

As marking the trend of the times, we may note that the
following year, 1819, a law was passed in New Hampshire pro¬
viding that no person should be forced to join any church or
contribute to the support of any ecclesiastical institution with¬
out his consent, thus following the example of Connecticut in
completely divorcing Church and State.3 On the other hand,
an amendment to the Constitution of Massachusetts, proposed
by the convention held in that state in 1820 for the purpose of
revising the Constitution, which proposed to annul the clause
in the Declaration of Rights compelling church attendance,
was rejected by a majority of over eight thousand.4 With
inexplicable carelessness, considering the high quality of the

1 Conn. Couranty Aug. 4, 1818.

2 Ibid. y Oct. 13, 1818. This gives the votes by counties and towns.

3 Some Remarks on the “ Toleration Act ” 0/ /<?/£, (Exeter, 1823). This was written
by an opponent of the Act, who claimed it had resulted in a great decrease in church
membership.

4 Journal of Debates and Proceedings of the Convention of Delegates , (Boston, 1853),
P- 633.

A NEW OUTLOOK, 1815-1825

323

members of the convention, this amendment was offered to the
people as involving three separate matters, two of which were
in no way germane to the other ; and perhaps the fairer test of
public sentiment is to be found twelve years later, when the
religious portion of the amendment was again offered in better
form and adopted.1

In 1820 the religious test for office was done away with, as
was also the property qualification for the suffrage, any male
citizen paying a state or county tax — with slight exceptions
— being made eligible to vote. As a matter of fact, in Massa¬
chusetts, unlike Connecticut, the property qualification under
the old Constitution had long been a dead letter, and the tech¬
nical widening of the franchise did not result in increasing the
number of actual voters.2

In the various legal and constitutional changes occurring
within the years just before and after 1820, we have dearly
discernible, behind the dry legalistic formulae, the striving to
complete the revolutionary movement of the preceding century
and to give to the common man those equal rights and oppor¬
tunities which had been held out to him as lures in the Revolu¬
tionary propaganda and then subsequently to a great extent
denied to him. The separation of Maine from Massachusetts
and the creation of a sixth New England State was in direct
line with the desire of the individual for greater freedom of self-
expression. It was this separation, which occurred in 1820,
that was one of the main reasons for the revision of the Massa¬
chusetts Constitution just mentioned.

There had been a revival of the project of separation in 1816,
but the suggestion had been voted down in that year owing to
a very practical business drawback.3 Under the Federal coast¬
ing laws, vessels were permitted to go freely from any port in a
state to another in the same or an adjoining state, but if the
port to which they sailed were located in a state not immedi¬
ately adjoining, then they were required to clear at a custom-

1 Frothingham, Constitution of Massachusetts, p. 41.

2 Morison, Otis , vol. II, p. 235 n.

3 E. Stan wood, “The Separation of Maine from Massachusetts,” Mass. Hist. Soc.,
Proceedings , Ser. Ill, vol. I, p. 149.

324

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

house, which entailed loss of both time and money. The
coasting trade of the Province of Maine employed about fifty
thousand tons of shipping and between two and three thousand
seamen, being one ninth part of the entire coasting trade of
the United States.1 So long as Maine continued a part of Mas¬
sachusetts, not only was Boston within “the same state” but
New Elampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New York
were all “adjoining” states; but if separation should occur,
then the only free interstate trade left would be with New
Hampshire. Friends of Maine, notably Rufus King, secured
the passage of a law in Congress in 1819, opening the entire
coasting trade of the United States to vessels from any domestic
port, thus preparing the way for Maine to become independent
of Massachusetts. The question came up for settlement im¬
mediately following this.2

The territory of Maine, which comprised five sevenths of
the whole of Massachusetts as then constituted and was greater
than all the rest of New England combined, had a population
of about three hundred thousand, which was expected to grow
with the rapidity of the new Western states. It was pointed
out that the government at Boston was practically an absentee
one, and that, as the representatives of Maine were always in a
minority, the affairs of that vast province were certain to be
managed in the interests of Massachusetts proper rather than
in those of Maine, which thus occupied almost a colonial status.
A more interesting argument, strongly urged, was that of the
influence of independence upon the development of individual¬
ity. “The pride of place has no inconsiderable effect on char¬
acter,” wrote one advocate. “Look at the new states of the
west. Have they not produced to their country, men of dis¬
tinguished virtues and talents, who probably would have lived
unknown, and ‘blossomed unseen/ if they had remained in
their colonial or territorial condition ?” 3

There was only moderate opposition on the part of Massachu¬
setts, and the legislature passed an Act permitting Maine to
separate, provided she voted to do so, adopted a constitution,

1 King, Rufus King , vol. VI, p. 212.

2 Eastern Argus , March 16, 1819. 3 Ibid., March 30, 1819.

A NEW OUTLOOK, 1815-1825

325

and received the sanction of Congress.1 The vote of the inhab¬
itants was overwhelmingly in favor of separate statehood, and
Governor Brooks therefore issued a proclamation for a constitu¬
tional convention. The changed sentiment of the day was
evident in the two important points of religion and the suffrage.
In the Constitution as adopted, complete toleration was pro¬
vided, Church and State were divorced, and the suffrage was
granted to every male citizen of twenty-one years and upwards
who had resided in the state for three months, practically with¬
out exception.2 A suggestion was made in the debates to ex¬
clude Negroes, but was promptly voted down.3 In December
the proposed Constitution was adopted by the people by a vote
of nearly ten to one in favor.4

The question, however, was not to be terminated as a merely
local one. The Democrats of Maine might prefer a state of
their own, and the Federalists of Massachusetts might be will¬
ing to wish them God-speed, so as to “give us a snug little
Federal State for the rest of our lives,” as one of them said; 5
but the rest of the Union had their eyes fixed upon the implica¬
tions of this new condition of affairs. Old Massachusetts, it is
true, would be reduced by the scission to a state of the second
rank, inferior to New York as the leading power of the North ;
but the addition of a new state would give that section two
additional votes in the United States Senate, fit was only five
years since the Hartford Convention and the threatened seces¬
sion of New England, and since then new causes of sectional
strife had arisen. For two years the question had been agi¬
tated of the admission of Missouri to the Union, and whether
it should be allowed to come in as a free or a slave state.
The South had been struggling in vain against the growing
anti-slavery feeling of the North to secure the extension of
slave territory, and now if Maine were admitted as a State,
the Northern influence in Congress would be still further

1 Ibid. , May n, 25 and June 1, 22, 1819.

2 Ibid., Nov. 2, 1819.

3 The Debates , Resolutions and Other Proceedings of the Council of Delegates , (Port¬
land, 1820), p. 95.

4 Eastern Argus , Dec. 14, 1819.

6 Quincy, Josiah Quincy, p. 374.

326 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

strengthened. When, therefore, the question came up of
admitting Maine, the Southerners at once seized upon the idea
of making the admission of Maine, which of course would
come in as a free state, depend upon the admission of Mis¬
souri as a slave state.1

As a result of the political manoeuvring it was finally agreed
to admit Maine and Missouri both, without conditions, but
with the further proviso, which constituted the famous Missouri
Compromise, that slavery should be forever prohibited north
of the parallel of latitude of 36° 30', which was in fact approxi¬
mately the southern boundary of Missouri. Up to this time,
although there had been more or less antislavery feeling in New
England, there were few workers in the cause, no organized
propaganda, and but little crystallized public sentiment.2^ The
question raised by the admission of Missouri would have aroused
much interest and discussion in any case, but the coupling of
it with the admission of Maine brought it home to New Eng¬
landers still more vividly. “The feelings of the country are
highly excited by the present debate in Congress on the subject
of slavery. It is shameful/’ wrote the Reverend Thomas
Robbins in an unusually long entry for his laconic diary, in
February 1820.3 Town meetings and legislatures passed reso¬
lutions. At a meeting at Salem, December 1819, while the
bills were still being debated in Congress, Judge Joseph Story
spoke passionately on the need for an express prohibition of
slavery in all territories, and against admitting any new states
except on condition of abolishing slavery within their limits.4
The New Hampshire legislature passed a resolve almost unani¬
mously that slavery was a great moral and political evil, and
should be tolerated only as a necessity, and that any further
extension should be absolutely prohibited.5 The Vermont
legislature declared that slavery was incompatible with the

1 J. A. Woodburn, “The Historical Significance of the Missouri Compromise,"
American Historical Association, Report , 1893, p. 259.

2 A. D. Adams, The Neglected Period of Anti-Slavery in America , 1808-1831 , Rad-
cliffe College Monograph, No. 14, pp. 66, 95.

3 Diary of Thomas Robbins , Boston, 1886, vol. II, p. 8 1 1 .

4 Story, Joseph Story , vol. I, p. 360.

6 F. B. Sanborn, New Hampshire , (Boston, 1904), p. 303.

A NEW OUTLOOK, 1815-1825

327

principles of all free government, and that the admission of
another slave state might endanger the freedom of the Union.1
On the other hand, the South was aroused to a defense of its
“peculiar institution,” and although the conflict between the
two sections was put off for another generation, the attempt of
the North at this time to limit the further extension of slavery
caused Southern sectional feeling to develop, and from this
debate may be dated a new era in the relations between the
states. Thus, only five years after the ending of the war with
England, America had almost forgotten Europe. Not only
was it busily engaged in its own commercial and social affairs,
expanding rapidly westward, but the chief political issue had
become wholly American and utterly unrelated to any of the
affairs of the Old World.

1 Records of Governor and Council , vol. VI, pp. 542 /.

CHAPTER XIV

A CHANGING SOCIETY

Character of Parties — Widening Gulf between Rich and
Poor — Foreigners — Pauper Problem — Anti-Catholic Feeling

— Destruction of Charlestown Convent — Riots in Boston —
Suffrage in Rhode Island — Changes in Transportation —
Effect on Capital a?7d Labor — Character of Labor Movement

— The Ten-Hour Day — Strikes — Trades Unions — Working¬
men s Party — Panic of iSjy

As we have frequently pointed out in both this and the
preceding volume, there were two distinct movements in the
American Revolution, one for independence of the mother
country, and the other for the overthrow of aristocratic control.
That the latter struggle assumed, on the whole, a moderate
and peaceful aspect and did not repeat the bloody scenes of the
well-defined course of revolutions in other countries was prob¬
ably due in the main to the presence of ample free lands, both
within the old colonies and to the westward. These lands not
only served to draw off the more restless, energetic, and turbu¬
lent elements among the people, but by proving a constant
drain on the man-power of the older communities tended to
maintain the economic position of labor in them and to enable
the poorer portions of such communities, on the whole, to
maintain a more or less even standard of living. The vast
economic changes which occurred in the quarter of a century
from 1825 to 1850 upset the equilibrium of the old social struc¬
ture in New England, and brought in a period of seething un¬
rest, which expressed itself in a multitude of minor and short¬
lived parties and groups advocating a bewildering diversity
of “isms.” The remaining chapters of this volume will reveal

A CHANGING SOCIETY

329

some of the aspects of this period, although it is impossible to
display all its manifold variety. Almost all the movements
in reality but express forms of a single contest — /that of the
common man against the privileged classes for a greater share
in the good things of life, whether it was for the suffrage, higher
wages, shorter hours of labor, better education, social recogni¬
tion, or what not. )

By far the keenest foreign observer of this period of American
life, and one of the sanest who has ever commented upon
America at any time, saw clearly what underlay the multi¬
tudinous struggles and movements of the day. “All the
domestic controversies of the Americans at first appear to a
stranger to be incomprehensible or puerile,” wrote De Tocque-
ville of his impressions when here in 1831. But he adds that,
after studying all the many parties, the deeper do we perceive
that they are all connected with the fundamental divisions
that have always existed in free communities, of which “the
object of the one is to limit, and that of the other to extend, the
authority of the people.” 1

This was also clearly seen by many Americans themselves.
“There can be but two parties in politics in this country, for
any length of time,” we read in the Boston Statesman. “Minor
divisions, arising from local causes and personal preferences,
must be again, as they always have been heretofore, swallowed
up in the two great natural divisions, democratic and Aristo¬
cratic. It is of very little consequence what parties are called.” 2
We shall not, therefore, attempt to trace the rise and fall of the
many political movements of this quarter of a century, but
merely discuss the social unrest in some of its broader aspects.

To a great extent the division was still between the country
and the town — a continuation of the old parties which we
have followed from early in the beginning of the eighteenth
century.3 {The country folk felt themselves exploited by the
town dwellers with their control of the banks, shipping, rail-

1 Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America , (Cambridge, 1862), vol. I, pp. 226 /.

2 Issue of March 6, 1830.

3 Cf. Adams, Revolutionary New England, yip. 94 jj., 154 jf. The division ran back
even to earlier times.

330

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

roads, and manufactures, and it was this rivalry that was to be
“the lifeblood of Jacksonian Democracy.”1 The doctrine of
equality and the opportunities offered by free land and a
rapidly expanding society in a new country restlessly stirred the
imaginations of the poorer classes^ ‘JI never met in America,”
says De Tocqueville, “with any citizen so poor as not to cast a
glance of hope and envy on the enjoyments of the rich, or whose
imagination did not possess itself by anticipation of those good
things which fate still obstinately withheld from him. ■y In
the decades now beginning, however, there were two tendencies
at work which emphasized the gulf between rich and poor and
between town and country. One was the change in the nature
of employment, due to the growth of manufactures, and the
other was the rapid increase in luxuries which wealth could
buy. Of the former we shall speak both in this and in later
chapters. Of the latter innumerable illustrations might be
given, but we may take, at hazard, that of ocean travel.

In the earlier days there had been comparatively little differ¬
ence between the accommodations to be enjoyed or suffered by
rich and poor. After 1820 passenger travel became an impor¬
tant branch of ocean commerce, but even as late as 1850 the
conditions under which poor immigrants crossed the sea were
indescribable. The lower deck of an emigrant ship was in
many cases no better than a slaver. The common height
between decks was only four to five feet, so that the herded
masses could not even stand upright. The still lower or “orlop
deck” was nothing but a black hole, too bad to use even for
cattle.3 In the official report of a member of the New York
Academy of Medicine, who inspected the Ceylon on her arrival
from Liverpool in 1847, we read: “We passed through the
steerage . . . but the indescribable filth, the emaciated, half¬
nude figures, many with the eruption disfiguring their faces,
crouching in their bunks or strewed over the decks . . . pre¬
sented a picture of which neither pen nor pencil can convey a

1 A. B. Darling, 'Political Changes in Massachusetts , 1824-1848 , (Yale University
Press, 1925), p. 3.

2 Op. cit., vol. II, p. 157.

3 F. Kapp, Immigration and the Commissioners of Emigration, (New York, 1870),
p. 20.

A CHANGING SOCIETY

33 1

full idea. . . . Some were just rising from their berths for the
first time since leaving Liverpool, having been suffered to lie
there during the entire voyage wallowing in their own filth. ” 1

Let us compare this with the fashion in which the new-rich
could make the same journey. “ The packet ships between New
York and Liverpool,” wrote an English traveler by no means
uncritical of things American in 1824, “are fitted up in a style
of the greatest magnificence. Indeed, everything is lavished
upon them that luxury can devise, or comfort require. Hand¬
some carpets, ornamented lamps, silk curtains, a profusion of
gilding, glass, and mahogany; a piano-forte and sofas in the
ladies cabin; baths, &c., &c. ‘The Paris/ a packet-ship
trading to Havre, had a cabin fitted up in the most splendid
style I ever saw in any vessel, except perhaps in the Royal
Yachts of the King of England. The curtains of the berths
were of rich straw-coloured silk, and the sides of the cabins
were of rosewood, mahogany, and curled maple. Moreover,
the intervals between the doors of the different state rooms,
were panelled with mirrors, and would have reminded me of
the appearance of the ‘ Cafe des Milles Colonnes/ if that glory
of the Palais Royal had not been far inferior in cleanliness.” 2

If the above contrast is more vivid than might be found in
much else as yet in the lives of rich and poor, nevertheless it
serves to bring distinctly before us the fact that money was
now coming to buy far more in the way of ostentatious luxury
than it could have done a generation earlier, and we must
remember that the moneyed class was larger and much richer,
whereas the working classes — to denote what is commonly
understood by that misused term — were steadily falling behind
in comparative purchasing power. The advances which the
farmer and the artisan were making in petty comforts were as
nothing compared with the rapid strides which the new-rich
were making in opulence and display. There had never been
economic or social equality in New England, — far from it, —
but also there had never been so wide a gulf as was now rapidly

lT. W. Page, “The Transportation of Immigrants and Reception Arrangements in
the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Political Economy , vol. XIX, p. 739.

2 Blane, Excursion through the United States , p. 351.

332

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

broadening for all men to see. The result was a great increase
in the exodus of the poorer people from that section to the
larger opportunities and particularly the more democratic
atmosphere of the West. There was also an increase in the
number of immigrants from Europe, to take the places left
vacant by the native emigrants, and a ferment in the mixed
population thus developing. So many were moving from their
old homes to found new ones in a West where “equality” still
possessed some meaning that it was said: “The East was
breaking up.” The numbers who now swarmed in from the
Old World also began to cause great anxiety and bitter feeling.

It is impossible to arrive at accurate figures for either move¬
ment, but even the approximations possible show striking re¬
sults as to the migratory movement of the New Englanders
and the replacement of the old stock with foreigners. Had the
population continued to grow at the normal rate of natural
increase from 1790 to 1840, that of Massachusetts would have
been 1,321,709 instead of the actual figure of only 729,031, and
of the whole of New England 3,515,074 instead of 2,212,908.
This difference — of 592,678 in the case of Massachusetts and
of 1,302,166 in that of New England — represents the loss by
emigration of New Englanders and their descendants, less
what was made up by the immigration of foreigners.1 Even
if the estimate of natural increase is too high, it is evident, as
we know from other indications, that the loss to New England
ran into hundreds of thousands. On the other hand, in the
twenty-five years between 1820 and 1845 approximately 3400
foreigners entered New England by way of Portland and Fal¬
mouth, 35,000 byway of Passamaquoddy, and 60,600 byway
of Boston, as well as several thousand through other ports.
Moreover, on account of certain port-regulations, it is probable
that a far larger number of immigrants found their way into
New England than through her own ports directly, these others
coming by way of Canada or New York and thence overland.

For the entire country, the figures for the decade from 1830
to 1840 were quadruple those of the previous one, and the
problem began to attract serious attention. The greater part

1 Jesse Chickering, Immigration into the United States , (Boston, 1848), p. 31.

A CHANGING SOCIETY

333

of those entering were from Ireland, owing partly in the later
years to the famine conditions prevailing there in 1826,1 and
in New England the problem came to be mainly one of the Irish
and Catholics. It was they who lingered on the seaboard
and manufacturing towns and created a problem that was at
once racial, social, political, and religious.2

The subject was “one of great delicacy,” a writer pointed
out in 1841, and “involves many of the conflicting tastes, pas¬
sions, and prejudices of this great community. . . . We
admit the subject has a sting in it.” 3 It was complained that
the two races could not possibly understand each other, that
the treatment meted out to the newly arrived Irishman, full
of romantic idealism as to what he was to find in the new land,
embittered him from the start. Stigmatized as an alien, “he
falls into the circle of his fellow-countrymen, becomes one of
the mass of ignorance and intemperance, which disgraces our
cities, and is soon, in fact, little better than a colonist, in
the land which he sought with” reverence. The “cool New
Englander” was said not to understand the Celtic tempera¬
ment, to be enraged at the Irishman’s vehemence in politics,
while the laboring class disliked the Irish, as they did more
work for less pay.4 Easy and fraudulent naturalization was
felt to be the real source of the political difficulty of the prob¬
lem, and it was estimated in 1836 that fully one sixth of the
naturalized voters in the election of that year had obtained
their papers by fraud.5

The character of many of the immigrants and certain condi¬
tions of their emigration from home did create a serious social
problem. Foreign nations, notably the small German States,
but also Great Britain, discovered that it was cheaper to ship
paupers to America than to maintain them in almshouses at
home. Indeed, some of the German States and Switzerland
not only emptied their poorhouses but shipped over convicts

1T. W. Page, “The Causes of the Earlier European Immigration to the United
States,” Journal of Political Economy , vol. XIX, p. 769.

2 J. R. Commons and others, History of Labor in the United States , (New York,
1921), vol. I, p. 413 ; “Immigration,” North American Review , vol. XL, [1835], p. 464.

3 “The Irish in America,” North American Review , vol. LII, p. 192.

4 Ibid.y pp. 205 /., 208. 5 Page, op. cit ., p. 689.

334

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

condemned to life sentences.1 England never sent criminals
in this period, but there was a considerable export of paupers,
the consul at Liverpool reporting five hundred being thus sent
at the expense of their parishes in 1832.2 Apparently, how¬
ever, this was done on a small scale compared with the total
number of emigrants, and created international ill-will out of
all proportion to the actual extent of the evil. Some of the
English colonies were worse offenders than the mother country.
Jamaica passed a law that every foreign vessel under one
hundred tons, most of that size being American, had to carry
away one pauper or other undesirable person. On complaint
by President Van Buren, Lord Palmerston at once ordered this
practice to be stopped.3

The extreme poverty of many of the immigrants and their
inability to settle themselves promptly in their new surround¬
ings created a serious problem for all the seaboard towns where
they congregated. In 1832 the South Boston Almshouse held
only 340 natives as against 613 immigrants. In the same year
the Free Dispensary in Boston treated 854 Americans and 1331
immigrants, of whom 1234 were Irish, 72 English, and only 25
of other nationalities.4 Four years later, of the 866 paupers
in the Boston House of Refuge, 516 were foreigners.5

With the increasing number of Catholics, the Catholic Church
began to show signs of broadening activity, as was natural
enough. In the summer of 1829 a weekly paper called The
Catholic Press was started at Hartford, and some months later
another, with the somewhat provocative title of The Jesuit ,
was founded in Boston, the name being changed later.6 In
1831 the Reverend Lyman Beecher entered the lists, and in
four lectures delivered in Boston vigorously opposed Catholic

1 Page, op . cit., p. 1018. Cf. Message from President Van Buren on Foreign
Paupers, House of Repres. Doct. No. 370, 25th Cong., 2d Sess., 1838, p. 14.

2 Report of Secretary of Treasury Relative to Deportation of Paupers from Great
Britain, U. S. Senate Doct. No. 3, 24th Cong., 2d Sess., pp. 3 ff.

3 Message from President Van Buren, op. cit ., pp. i f.

4 Page, op. cit., p. 1012.

6 Report of a Select Committee on Foreign Paupers. House of Repres. Doct. No. 1040,
25th Cong., 2d Sess., 1838, p. 3.

6 Christian Register, July 25, Sept. 12, 1829; “Destruction of the Charlestown Con¬
vent,” U. S. Catholic Historical Society, Records and Studies, vol. XIII, p. 106.

A CHANGING SOCIETY

335

doctrine, and denounced the influence of that church in politics.
It had ever, he said, been opposed to freedom, had always sup¬
ported the most despotic governments, and was incompatible
with republican institutions. If the liberties of the nation
were ever overthrown, it would probably be by the combina¬
tion of unprincipled men with Roman Catholics.1 The Right
Reverend Bishop Fenwick answered in another series of lec¬
tures, defending his Church from Beecher’s attack, and the
controversy stirred up much discussion and bad feeling.2

A convent of Ursuline nuns had been established at Charles¬
town and had become very popular as a school for girls of
prominent families, numbering many Protestants among the
boarders and attracting pupils whose homes were scattered
from Canada to New Orleans. From about the time of Beech¬
er’s first attacks, many stories were circulated among the lower
classes as to ill-treatment both of nuns and of scholars. It was
even said that one of the girls had been murdered. There was
no foundation whatever for any of these rumors, but Beecher
again opened attack on the Catholics in several fiery sermons
and other clergy followed. The mob in Boston and Charles¬
town, always easily stirred to action, now resolved to take a
hand.3 Anonymous notices were posted, proclaiming that if
there were not an immediate legal investigation before August
14, the nunnery would “be demolished by the Truckmen of
Boston.” 4

Although the selectmen of the town made a thorough investi¬
gation of the convent and in an official statement declared that
there was no foundation for criticism, the threat was carried
out. A mob of about four thousand persons attacked the
building at night and burned it to the ground, the nuns and
their sixty-two pupils escaping to Roxbury.5 A large meeting
of leading Protestants was at once held in Faneuil Hall to

1 Digests of the lectures were given in the New York Observer, Jan. 29, Feb. 5, 1 83 1 .
I have been unable to find them in complete form.

2 Boston Statesman , Jan. 22, 1831.

3 “Destruction of the Charlestown Convent,” U. S. Cath. Hist. Soc., Records and
Studies , vol. XII, pp. 69 ff.

4 E. Tucker, The Burning of the Ursuline Convent , (Worcester, 1890), p. 11.

5 Vide the Records and Studies , cit. supra , and “The Roxbury Committee of Vigi¬
lance,” Mass. Hist. Soc., Proceedings , vol. LVIII, pp. 325^.

336 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

express their detestation of the outrage, but the authorities
did little more than to make a farce of the subsequent pro¬
ceedings. Nothing was done to make good the property loss
of over $20,000, although for many years the matter was
occasionally brought up in the legislature.1 Of those who had
taken part in the riot, one hundred were arrested but only
thirteen were indicted, and of those none were convicted except
one young man who was pardoned shortly after.2 A book was
published just at this time purporting to be the experiences of a
girl in the convent but which was obviously not written in the
language that would be employed by such a person as the
reputed author.3 The feeling aroused in the lower orders of
the Protestants, however, was running so high it was feared
the Catholics might retaliate, and the troops were called out.
Bishop Fenwick behaved with extreme good sense and modera¬
tion throughout, and warned his people, through the parochial
priests, against violence, advising them to await the course
of justice.4

Anti-Catholic riots occurred in New York and other cities,
and the agitation was kept up in various New England news¬
papers.5 In June 1837 a serious riot occurred in Boston,
starting between some firemen and some Irish who were wait¬
ing for a funeral to pass. The numbers on both sides rapidly
increased, and the Protestant mob finally sacked a number of
houses belonging to the Irish after the latter had quieted down
and stopped fighting. It was necessary to call out the militia,

1 Vide Report of Committee to Consider Indemnifying the Proprietors of the Ur-
suline Convent, Mass. House Doct. No. jo, 1842; Report of Special Committee on
petition of Amos Lawrence and 2000 others, Mass. House Doct. No. 32 y 1844.

2 The trial is given in Boston Statesmany Dec. 6, 13, 27, 1834, and Jan. 3, 1835.

3 Six Months in a Convent , or the Narrative of Rebecca Theresa Reed, (Boston, 1835).
Cf. An Answer to Six Months in a Convent , by the Lady Superior , (Boston, 1835), and A
Review of the Lady Superior s Reply to ‘ Six Months in a Convent , ’ being a Vindication of
Miss Reed , (Boston, 1835). There is quite a little contemporary literature on this
topic.

4 J. B. McMaster, History of the People of the United States , (New York, 1910),
vol. VI, p. 229.

B Boston Courier , March 30, 1835. The Providence Journalhad an article on a “cargo
of priests” recently arrived. Nov. 19, 1835. The Connecticut Courant stated that
two Roman Catholic bishops had pledged $1,000,000 to Mexico to be used against Texas,
etc., Dec. 7, 1835. The Boston Courier gives an account of a meeting held to show the
dangers of Popery, Jan. 14, 1836. Cf. June 13.

A CHANGING SOCIETY

337

and it took several companies, preceded by the Lancers and a
troop of horse, to dispel the rioters.1

Another indication of strong feeling against the Irish was given
a few months later on the occasion of a muster of six companies
of militia. One of these, known as the Montgomery Guards,
composed of naturalized and native Irishmen, had recently
been formed, and in accordance with the orders of the Ad¬
jutant-General, this company marched to the place of meet¬
ing. When they appeared, the members of the other five
companies, with few exceptions, abandoned their officers and
left the field. When the Guards returned to their armory,
they were mobbed and assaulted with bricks and other mis¬
siles, behaving with perfect self-control themselves. A few
days later the Adjutant-General issued general orders strongly
condemning the action of the other regiments for conduct
“unbecoming the citizen and the soldier,” and praising “the
exemplary behavior of the Montgomery Guards under the
trying circumstances.” 2 Although all of the Guards were
American citizens enrolled in the service of the state, the New
York Journal of Commerce spoke of them as “foreigners” who
had had “the effrontery” and “total want of decency” to
appear with arms in their hands.3

( The rioting that occurred in many of the states and the bitter
racial and religious feelings aroused cannot be laid wholly at
the door of the more ignorant classes. If the clergy did not
hesitate to stir up religious hatred from their pulpits, easily
translated by the mob into arson and pillage, so also the con¬
servatives, anxious to maintain the existing state of things
inuring to their own advantage, did not hesitate to invoke
racial antagonism to defeat the demands for any change^
Manhood suffrage was so nearly attained in all the New Eng¬
land states except Connecticut, where Negroes were excluded,
and in Rhode Island, where the suffrage was still archaic, that
the general unrest of the times did not cause much discussion
of the franchise except in the latter state. There, however,

1 Independent Chronicle , June 14, July 12, 1837.

2 Ibid., Sept. 13, 20, 1837.

3 Issue of Sept. 13, 1837.

338 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

the demands of the people on the one hand and the opposition
of the privileged class on the other were to develop into a bitter
struggle, only the beginning of which lies in the period covered
by this chapter. In 1829 a meeting attended by twelve to
fifteen hundred persons was held at Providence, and a mildly
worded memorial was drawn up to present to the legislature.
Owing to the high property-qualification required, — a free¬
hold estate worth $134, — the number of adult males entitled
to vote was only 8400 as against 12,365 who were disfranchised,
while the oldest son of a freeman was also a freeman, even
though he did not possess the property qualification. The
memorial protested against the “feudal absurdity” of the
latter provision and against the high property-requirement.
It was pointed out that the suffrage laws of Rhode Island were
far less liberal than those of any other state, and although
denying that the petitioners asked for any great change, the
memorial requested that the laws be amended so that at least
a majority of the adult males might be made voters.1

The committee of the legislature to which the memorial was
referred brought in a report that was both stupid and insulting.
It said that there was nothing in the memorial which required
attention, and although the committee stated that they had
“not thought it necessary to inquire particularly how many of
the signers are native citizens of the state,” they went on to
denounce the signers as foreigners, and then drew a red herring
across the trail of the real controversy by playing on racial
antagonism against both Irish and Negroes.2 Although the
controversy died down for the moment, nothing could have
been better calculated to embitter the unenfranchised than
this substitution of insult and abuse for reason by the ruling
class.

In 1834 a convention assembled at Providence to consider
the matter again, and a committee, of which Thomas W. Dorr
was a member, drew up an address to the people, in which it

1 Providence Patriot, April 1,1829; Newport Mercury, April 4, 1829; Manufacturers'
& Farmers' Journal, Nov. 30, 1829.

2 Report of the Committee on the Subject of the Extension of the Suffrage, Rhode
Island House Report , June 1829.

A CHANGING SOCIETY

339

was pointed out that Rhode Island was now the only state in
the Union which did not have a written constitution, and that
it was improper that the legislature should alone determine the
right of the people to vote. Not only did considerably less
than one half of the men of the state possess the franchise, but
so unequal was the representation that of those who did, one
half elected fifty-one representatives to the legislature and the
other half only twenty-one. The new problem arising from
the rapid urban growth was shown by the fact that although
Jamestown elected one representative for every eighteen free¬
men, Providence had only one for every two hundred and
seventy-five. But again the demands for reform were blocked.1
The injustice of unequal representation, owing to changes in
population, had become a crying evil throughout New England,
but Vermont was the only state which attempted to remedy it.2

The change from rural to urban conditions of life was now
well under way. Boston, which had a population of 43,298 in
1820, rose to 93,383 by 1840; and taking the country as a
whole, the proportion of the total population living in cities
of over 8000 people nearly doubled in the two decades. This
made possible an increase in the feeling of solidarity among
the laboring class, although it is a mistake to think, as yet,
of a large manufacturing population crowded into industrial
centres.3

The new transportation facilities, however, were beginning
rapidly to transform the position and character of labor. The
first great change came with the opening of the Erie Canal in
1825, by which the cost of transportation from Buffalo to New
York was reduced from a hundred dollars a ton to twenty-five
and even fifteen, and the time of passage from twenty days to
eight. At first this served to tap only western New York, but
with the extremely rapid rise of shipping on the Great Lakes a

1 An Address to the People of Rhode Island from the Convention Assembled at Provi¬
dence, (Providence, 1834), pp. 19 ff. There was little change made during the years
immediately following, and Negroes continued to be disfranchised. Rhode Island
Acts and Resolves , Jan. 1836, p. 3; June 1840, p. 16.

2 Journal of the Convention . . . together with the Amendments of the Constitution ,
(St. Albans, 1836), pp. i$ff.

3 Commons, History of Labor , vol. I, p. 176; A. B. Darling, “The Workingmen’s
Party in Massachusetts, 1833-1834,’’ American Historical Review, vol. XXIX, p. 84.

340

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

vast region was opened up, both as a source of agricultural
products and as a market for manufactured goods.1 The
enormous success of this canal, which threatened to deprive
Philadelphia of its trade to the West, forced Pennsylvania to
construct a combined canal- and rail-system to Pittsburgh.
New England remained more isolated than ever, and it was
only about 1838 that by linking up several small railroads
Boston was able to secure a through line to Albany, and thus
tap the West by way of the Erie Canal. By that time there
was war to the knife in railroad-building between New York
and Pennsylvania for the Western trade, and Boston was
struggling to exchange her oil, fish, and manufactured goods
for corn and wheat at Oswego.2

This vast widening of the domestic markets had its effect
on both capital and labor. It greatly increased the profits and
power of the merchant capitalists as the farmers and manu¬
facturers now looked to them to market their products and
both became largely dependent upon them. The manufac¬
turer, always short of capital, now began to appeal to the
merchant for capital as well as for outlets for his products.3
The merchant capitalists, in turn, competing with each other
and anxious to secure as much as possible of the rapidly ex¬
panding but highly competitive markets, sought to reduce the
cost of goods. They tried to hold down or lower wages and
even to alter the whole scheme of production by the use of con¬
vict labor. Moreover, the increased means of travel, passenger
as well as freight, made it more feasible to transport workers
from one section to another, and made the manufacturer less
dependent upon those in his immediate neighborhood.4 In
one respect the American worker was not opposed to what has
come to be called the Industrial Revolution. There are prac¬
tically no instances in which he objected to the introduction of
machinery. What he did object to, and strenuously, was

1 Johnson, For. and Dom. Commerce , vol. I, pp. 230 ff.; L. K. Mathews, “The Erie
Canal and the Settlement of the West,” Buffalo Hist. Soc., Publications, vol. XIV,
pp. 189/.

2 Independent Chronicle , Jan. 3, 1838. Cf. History of Transportation in the United
States before i860 , ed. B. H. Meyer, (Washington, 1917), pp. 318 ff.

3 Commons, Hist, of Labor, vol. I, p. 154. 4 Ibid., pp. 154 /., 440.

A CHANGING SOCIETY

34i

what he conceived as his exploitation by the new capitalist pro¬
ducers, who had acquired their wealth as distributors rather
than producers, and who had suddenly arisen in a hitherto but
little differentiated society.1

The conditions of the workers’lives, as well as many of their
grievances, fall more properly into later chapters, and we shall
here consider only their attitude and earlier struggles to free
themselves from what they felt was a menace to their standing
as human beings, deserving equality of treatment and oppor¬
tunity. The workingmen of this period were fighting not only
for wages and shorter hours but for all sorts of reforms in legal
practice — education, temperance, land tenure, the treatment
of women and children, and other matters. In short, they
were fighting to maintain and improve a position they had held
in a society which had been primarily agricultural and simple^
and were not fighting as wage-earners forming a separate class
in a highly organized industrial organization. In a Fourth of
July address before the Democratic workingmen of Milford,
Abel Cushing named “ the pursuit of wealth, character, and
consequence in the community/’ as the rights for which the
Democrats were striving.2 It was the last, the loss of “con¬
sequence in the community,” due to the rapid rise of an ex¬
tremely rich class and to the new conditions of labor, that
troubled the mind of the laboring man more than anything else
at this time. He was trying to save the social recognition —
such as it had been — which he had received in the past, and
to maintain his status, rather than to combat the specific evils
of a new system. Organization was comparatively slow in
New England, and little was done in that section before 1840,
as compared with other parts of the country, to shorten the
hours of labor.

There were, however, two notable strikes that we may con¬
sider for the light which they shed on the mind and methods of
the capitalists at this period. The hours of labor varied in
different employments. In manufacturing, the Eagle Mills
at Griswold, Connecticut, for example, required fifteen hours

1 Norman Ware, The Industrial Worker , 1840-1860 , (Boston, 1924), p. xi.

2 Boston Statesman , July 19, 1834.

342

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

and ten minutes actual labor per day, while another in the
vicinity demanded fourteen hours.1 A report to the Massa¬
chusetts Senate noted that in that state the time of employ¬
ment for children in the mills was usually thirteen hours a day,
excepting the Sabbath, which “leaves little opportunity for
daily instruction.” 2 In the trades and crafts the old custom of
“from sunrise to sunset” still prevailed, having been taken
over from agriculture. Complaints of the evils of lack of leis¬
ure began to be heard, and in 1825 the first great strike for the
ten-hour day was brought on by the carpenters of Boston.

The journeymen passed resolutions declaring that the exist¬
ing condition was both unjust and inhumane, and that there¬
after ten hours should constitute a working day. The master
carpenters at once countered with a set of resolutions in which
they said that they learned “with surprise and regret” of the
formation of a combination to alter the length of a day’s work
from “ that which has been customary from time immemorial ” ;
that the measure was calculated “to exert a very unhappy
influence on our apprentices, by seducing them from that course
of industry and economy of time, to which we are anxious to
enure them” ; that “it will expose the Journeymen themselves
to many temptations and improvident practices”; that they
dreaded the consequences upon the morals of society; that
they would employ no journeyman who persisted in the de¬
mand ; and would make no change in the hours.3

Back of the master carpenters, however, and still more
important as opponents of labor, were the capitalists on whom
the masters were dependent for work. A number of these
“gentlemen engaged in building the present season,” as they
styled themselves, at once came to the assistance of the masters
in resisting the demands of the men for the same working hours
that had already been accepted in New York. They stated
that they would support the masters to the extent, if necessary,
of suspending all building for the entire season, and would not

1 Seth Luther, An Address to the JV orking Men of New England , (Boston, 1832), p. 20.

2 J. R. Commons and others, A Documentary History of American Industrial Society ,
(Cleveland, 1910), vol. V, p. 59.

3 Commons, Doct. Hist. Amer. Indus. Soc ., vol. VI, p. 77.

A CHANGING SOCIETY

343

employ any journeyman who persisted in the demand for the
ten-hour day. Their resolutions were fully flavored with
hypocritical cant, which was peculiarly galling to those who
had not happened to make a fortune by speculating in land,
by legislative favors, army contracts, or other and more legiti¬
mate methods. It was bad enough for the workman to feel
himself inexorably slipping more and more into the power of
the new-rich, but to be told that he belonged to a different
order of humanity, that he was not entitled to leisure, and that
he would go to pieces morally if he were not kept working for
longer hours than the Southern Negroes, was a gratuitous insult.

It was this assumed moral superiority of the rich which
accounted for much of the bitter feeling against them. The
capitalists complained in their resolutions that if the “con¬
federacy” to secure shorter hours should be countenanced by
the community, the demand would spread to “all the Work¬
ing Classes . . . opening a wide door for idleness and vice,
and Anally commuting the present condition of the Mechanical
Classes, made happy and prosperous by frugality, orderly,
temperate and ancient habits, for that degraded state, by which
in other countries, many of these classes are obliged to leave
their homes, bringing with them those feelings and habits, and
a spirit of discontent and insubordination to which our native
Mechanics have hitherto been strangers.” The capitalists say
that “all combinations by any Classes of Citizens, intended
to regulate or effect the value of labor by abridging its duration,
are in a high degree unjust and injurious to all other classes,
inasmuch as they give an artificial and unnatural turn to busi¬
ness and tend to convert all its branches into Monopolies.” 1

Harrison Gray Otis was chairman of the capitalists’ com¬
mittee, and he and the other gentlemen evidently had no
objections to monopolies or “artificial and unnatural turns”
given to business by, for example, bank charters secured by
political party influence, or benefits derived from the duties of
a protective tariff for manufactures. Otis himself had en¬
deavored quietly to secure a bank charter from the legislature
so worded as to give himself and a few associates permanent

1 Ibid., pp. 79/.

344

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

control, regardless of the number of stockholders, and also,
after having become a heavy investor in cotton mills, had
turned from a freetrader to a protectionist — both surely
“artificial and unnatural turns.” 1 That he and others of his
class and outlook were honest in thinking that it was a very
reprehensible matter for workmen to attempt to secure better
hours or wages, whereas it was quite proper for themselves to
secure special privileges from government, is probably true.
That fact simply illustrates all the more clearly what govern¬
ment would become eventually, if entrusted wholly to any one
class, and reconciles one somewhat to democracy with all its
obvious and glaring faults. It makes all the difference in the
world whose ox is being gored. When workmen combined to
raise wages it was revolutionary, but when a few years later
the Boston coal dealers combined to advance the price of coal
fifty cents a ton, though “there was no reason but their ava¬
rice,” the conservatives had no complaint.2

Although the carpenters’ strike proved unsuccessful, a
number of less important strikes followed, and the agitation
for the ten-hour day was maintained.3 In 1831 an important
step was taken in the formation at Providence of “The New
England Association of Farmers, Mechanics, and other Work¬
ing Men.” The organization lasted only from December of
that year to October 1834, but held three conventions at which
delegates from five states took part. It was pledged to the
ten-hour day, and its activities were partly economic and
partly political, leading to the reentry of workingmen into poli¬
tics in 1833 and 1834. The note of resentment against the
attitude of the rich appears quite as clearly as the demand for
more leisure in the resolutions of the Association. At the
first convention complaint was made of “the low estimation
in which useful labor is held by many whose station in society
enables them to give the tone to public opinion.” 4 In the call

1 Morison, Otis , vol. I, p. 260; vol. II, pp. 288 /.

2 Niles Register , vol. LIX, p. 132 [1840].

3 There were several strikes in Boston in 1830 and 1831, and one at Taunton, all for
shorter hours. Some of the employers looked favorably on the contention of the men.
i6lh Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, 1901, p. 725.

4 Commons, Hist, of Labor , vol. I, p. 303.

A CHANGING SOCIETY

345

for the second convention it was pointed out that the learned
professions were crowded, and that all those who could resorted
to some means of living by their wits without hard physical
toil, and effected various combinations to consolidate their
position and advantages, “whilst the more industrious and
useful portion of the community, who are too intent upon their
daily occupation to form combinations for mutual advantage,
or to guard against the devices of their better informed or more
enterprising neighbours, are reduced to constant toil, stripped
of the better share of their earnings, holding a subordinate, if
not degraded situation in society, and frequently despised by
the very men and women and children, who live at ease upon
the fruits of their labour.” 1

In 1832 occurred the ship-carpenters’ strike in Boston, and
again it was the capitalists and shipowners, rather than the
master carpenters, who took the lead in suppressing the strike,
subscribing, it is said, $20,000 for the purpose and attempting
to import workmen from other places as strike-breakers. They
forced the master carpenters into line with themselves rather
than with the workmen, and the strike was lost to the men in
ten days, the capitalists stating that they would employ no man
who was a member of any combination.2 In the same year a
strike occurred among the weavers at the Thompsonville Manu¬
facturing Company’s plant in Connecticut, which resulted in
the company’s bringing suit against the strike-leaders, whom
they had imprisoned on a charge of conspiracy. Three sepa¬
rate trials took place, but in 1836 a verdict was rendered in favor
of the men, the case having attracted much attention as the
first of its kind in the country.3

The extreme lengths to which the owners of plants were will¬
ing to go to combat the new tendency to combination among
the employees is shown by the extraordinary agreement which
was drawn up by the Cocheco Manufacturing Company of
Dover, New Hampshire, and which they required all their
employees to sign. The workers were forced to agree to abide

1 Ibid ., vol. I, p. 304.

2 Ibid. , vol. I, pp. 312/.; 16th Annual Rept. Comm, of Labor, p. 725.

3 Commons, op. cit., pp. 313/.

346 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

by all the regulations which the company then had in force or
might thereafter adopt; “to work for such wages per week,
and prices by the Job, as the Company may see fit to pay”;
to be subject to all fines imposed ; not to quit their jobs under
two weeks’ notice, and if they did, to forfeit two weeks’ pay;
not to enter into any combination “whereby the work may be
impeded, or the Company’s interest in any way injured,” and
if they did, to forfeit all pay then due; and to accept the
monthly payment of wages.1

Two years later the first Trades Union in New England was
formed in Boston, representing sixteen trades and their several
organizations. It lasted only about a year, but is interesting
as showing that the division between workmen and employer
was not yet complete, and that the masters felt a certain soli¬
darity of interest with their men — which feeling was being
undermined by the capitalists, who were taking every means
and opportunity to force the masters over to their own side.
In admitting masters to the union, the workmen gave as ex¬
planation that “the interest of all who obtain their living by
honest labour is substantially the same, since the boss is often
brought back to journeywork by hard luck, and the journey¬
man may expect in his turn to become an employer, while both
of them are invariably imposed upon and treated as if belong¬
ing to an inferior grade of society by those who live without
labour. . . . There are in truth but two parties in the coun¬
try,” it continued, “the mechanics, farmers, artisans and all
who labour, whether as boss or journeymen” and “the rich
men, the professional men, and all who now live, or who intend
hereafter to live, without useful labour.” 2

The economic cleavages which were to be formed in society
by the Industrial Revolution were, in fact, but just beginning
to appear. When the Workingmen’s Party entered State poli¬
tics in Massachusetts, in 1834, it made a strong appeal for the
support of the workers in the mills and factories, but received
scant encouragement from that quarter. A distinct factory
population had not yet developed, and the party was not an

1 Luther, Address to the Working Men , p. 36.

2 Commons, op. cit., vol. I, p. 378.

A CHANGING SOCIETY

347

urban but a rural one, Boston contributing hardly one seventh
of its votes in its first campaign. Its urban element was
mainly made up of carpenters, masons, and other mechanics,
rather than of mill workers, who held more or less aloof. To
a great extent the party voiced the growing fear and dislike of
the country for the wealthy classes in the cities, who were
exploiting labor of all sorts and developing manufactures. It
may be said to have been merely the radical wing of the Demo¬
cratic Party, itself a “country” party, and very soon merged
with it.1

cc Who but the labourer, the mechanic, the farmer, the work¬
ing men of every description” are the true democrats, a writer
asked. Others may be in the party, but “the working classes
of our country constitute the bone and sinew of democracy.
They feel their principles and their daily experience is calcu¬
lated to fix and confirm them.” They “ are constantly insulted
and sneered upon by the rich and proud,” and “must act with
more energy. They must first revolutionize the state by break¬
ing down the usurped power of the Boston and Salem aristoc¬
racy, and the sprigs of nobility in other towns.” 2

The Democratic Party, as well as the great mass of the com¬
mon people in New England, was greatly opposed to the pro¬
tective tariff, and in the period covered by this chapter the
contest had not yet been settled among the capitalists them¬
selves, although the manufacturing interest was becoming
steadily more powerful as compared with the shipping. There
is little in the arguments for and against protection appearing
at this time which we are not familiar with to-day, after a
century of discussion, and we need not be detained by argu¬
ments, threadbare and worn, but still current on both sides.
Most although not all of the merchants who gradually trans¬
ferred their capital from ships to factories became acutely alive
to the necessity of protecting the American workingman —
and their own pocketbooks — against foreign competition,

1 Darling, “Workingmen’s Party in Massachusetts,” pp. 8i ff. The organization
meeting of the party is reported in the Boston Statesman , Sept. 4, 1830.

2 Quoted from the Lynn Mirror and Essex Democrat in the Boston Statesman , Sept.
11, 1830.

348 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

though the workingman himself clung stubbornly to free trade.
In the vote on the tariff of 1828, the representatives of New
England in Congress were twenty-four against to fifteen in
favor of protection. The gradual shift is noticeable by 1832,
when the actual votes were tied, seventeen to seventeen, with
five absent.1 The tremendous excitement which characterized
the tariff controversy of 1832-34, with the threatened nullifi¬
cation by South Carolina, belongs rather to national than to
sectional New England history.

This controversy, with the threatened action of South Caro¬
lina, appeared to be the only dark cloud on the business sky in
1832, when Jackson began his long contest with the United
States Bank. When in midsummer of the following year that
institution began to contract its loans, following the removal
of the Government deposits, the money market distinctly felt
the strain. By the end of 1833 and the beginning of 1834 the
country was in the throes of panic. Forty failures occurred in
New Bedford and ninety-three in Boston, to name only two
points.2 By October, however, the worst was over, and by
1835 the country had apparently wholly recovered. Specula¬
tion ensued on an enormous scale. The sale of public lands
increased from $5, 000, 000 in 1 834 to $25,000,000 in 1 835. V ast
sums had been spent on canals and other public works. In two
years the excess of imports over exports had been over
$> 1 1 1 ,000, 000. 3 Nearly three hundred and fifty new banks
were chartered between 1830 and 1837, of which New England
had more than its share, Connecticut organizing twenty-two
and Massachusetts seventy-two.4 Speculation in real estate
became a mania, not only in towns and cities but even in the
wilderness. In five years the valuation of New York City real
property jumped from $250,000,000 to $403,000,000. In a
short period before the bubble burst, building-lots in such a
place as Bangor, Maine, rose from $300 to $1000, and, on the

1 Speech of R. C. Winthrop in House of Representatives, Dec. 30, 1841 , (Washington,
1842), p. 9.

2 McMaster, Hist, of U. S ., vol. VI, p. 198 ; Boston Statesman , March 29, 1834.

3 Commons, Hist, of Labor , vol. I, p. 454.

4 Patriot and Democrat , March 14, 1840; R. C. McGrane, The Panic of 1837, (Uni¬
versity of Chicago Press, 1924), p. 13.

A CHANGING SOCIETY

349

absurd rumor that the timber supply of that state was almost
exhausted, timber lands jumped upward from three to five
hundred per cent in price.1

By the spring of 1836, however, money was becoming tight,
and by April it was said that borrowers were paying a premium
of ten per cent a month in New York, while the prices of labor
and living were very high.2 The famous Specie Circular, issued
by President Jackson in July, greatly increased the financial
stringency, and when Van Buren took office *in March 1837 he
refused to repeal it.3 Within a few weeks the crash came,
beginning with the failure of large cotton-houses in New Orleans,
with liabilities estimated at from $9,000,000 to $10,000,000.
Heavy failures of houses involved with these followed in New
York.4 On May 10 the banks of that city suspended payment,
followed about a week later by those in Philadelphia, Balti¬
more, Albany, Hartford, Boston, New Haven, Providence,
Mobile, Washington, and other cities.5 In all, during the
year six hundred and eighteen banks failed. In April some
of the most important mills in Lowell were considering closing
down, and so rapid was the devastation wrought that by July
it was estimated that a hundred thousand laboring men were
idle in New England, with perhaps twice that number on half
pay.6 In what had become one of the leading industries of
Massachusetts, boot and shoe manufacturing, scarcely a manu¬
facturer escaped bankruptcy, and it was said that fifty thou¬
sand persons were unemployed in the various branches of the
leather industry.7 By the same month, nearly one half of all
the spindles in Massachusetts had ceased operation, and it
was reported that a large part of them could not be started
again without raising new capital.8

By the spring of 1838 the financial situation was beginning
to clear. Specie was pouring into the country from Europe,
in April of that year three ships bringing in about $1,000,000

1 Ibid., pp. 45, 47. 2 Independent Chronicle , April 13, 23, 1836.

3 Money loaned in Boston at from two per cent to four per cent a month. Inde¬

pendent Chronicle , Feb. 4, 1837.

4 Ibid., March 11, 1837. 6 Ibid., May 24, 1837. 6 Ibid., April 22, July 11, 1837.

7 Hazard, Boot and Shoe Industry , p. 65; Independent Chronicle, July 11, 1837.

8 Ibid., July 15, 1837.

35o

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

each in gold.1 The banks of New England and most other
sections resumed specie payments, but it was not until five
years later that the country may be said to have recovered to
any marked extent. As late as 1839 the state of Maine had in
part to suspend payment, because the state treasurer found it
impossible to borrow money either in Europe or America.2
In fact, it was not until the discovery of gold in California
reinvigorated the channels of trade that the hard times may be
said to have ended. J

In so far as the richer classes were concerned, there was, of
course, a vast shifting of property. Some men went down ;
others gradually came up to take their places. The general
social effects, including a changed outlook on the times, was
more marked among the farmers and laborers of one sort and
another. Although there was a great drop in the price of all
articles and commodities, agriculture seems to have suffered
most. A Western paper made the calculation that, before the
panic, a farmer who carried a hundred bushels of wheat to
market could buy a certain list of necessities and luxuries, and
have J85.12J left out of his $ 100 , whereas in 1840, after selling
the same amount of wheat and buying the same articles, he
had only 1 i\ cents left.3

^ The effect on the frame of mind of labor was marked, and
the long period of depression following on the panic brought
about a feeling of social unrest that was hitherto unknown in
similar intensity in America. Lack of employment created
a far more bitter attitude toward immigration than we have
already noted. Moreover, the first outbreak of panic, with
the wholesale discharge of workmen, crushed out the nascent
labor-movement, and trade organizations. Local societies,
trades-unions, the national trades-unions, almost all organiza¬
tions as well as the newspapers that labor had started, all dis¬
appeared.4 In the following decade organized labor-movements
became negligible, and in their place we shall have to deal with
all sorts of humanitarian and speculative reforms, while labor
turned more and more to politics and the ballot, j

1 Patriot and Democrat , April 28, 1838. 3 McGrane, op. cit p. 175.

2 Kennebec Journal , Sept. 3, 1839. 4 Commons, Hist, of Lab or , vol. I, p. 456.

CHAPTER XV

HUMANITARIANISM

Development of Literature — Unitarianism — Transcenden¬
talism — Woman s Rights — Brook Farm — Education — School
Buildings — Teachers — Nonattendance — Imprisonment of
Debtors — Prisons — Blind — Deaf and Dumb — Insane —
Temperance — Peace Societies

The War of the Revolution, the years of political turmoil
following, and the two decades of entanglement with European
affairs from 1794 t0 the end of our war with England in 1815
had left little inclination for the cultivation of literature in
America. Almost insanely partisan politics, a bitter struggle
for commercial life, and a hated military conflict were not
conducive to fruits of the spirit. We have already noted,
however, the extraordinarily abrupt change which came over
the American mind with the signing of peace ; and there were
at that time a number of lads in different towns of eastern
New England whose most impressionable years were to be
influenced by the new outlook, and who a few years later were
to bring about a marked literary movement in that section.

In the same year in which the war ended, 1815, the North
American Review was founded at Boston, and although it was
modeled on the British quarterlies, it was to serve for two gen¬
erations as the vehicle for the expression of native American
scholarship and letters. Seven years after its founding, three
thousand copies were printed of each number, as compared
with two thousand copies of the American editions of the
Edinburgh and Quarterly together.1 It was not, however, until
the lads just mentioned grew into manhood that there occurred

1 Blane, Excursion through the U. S p. 458.

352

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

the remarkable flowering of the New England spirit in litera¬
ture which was a part of the new age both in Europe and
America — a flowering of native growth, though its roots were
in Europe.

Many of the leaders in what is frequently called — rather
grandiloquently and provincially — the “New England Renais¬
sance” spent some years in Europe under the direct influence
of European thought before they began their work at home.
The year 1815 saw Edward Everett and George Ticknor
landed in Germany for study at Gottingen, and two years later
George Bancroft was also there. Prescott, Longfellow, and
Emerson had all three been abroad for shorter or longer stays
before writing anything at home. In the decade or so follow¬
ing 1830, after a half-century of almost complete intellectual
and artistic sterility in New England, there suddenly appeared
a first slender volume of verse by Whittier (1831), the first
volume of Bancroft’s History of the United States (1834), Emer¬
son’s Nature and the other essays in that volume (1836), Haw¬
thorne’s Twice-told Tales (1837), Prescott’s Ferdinand and
Isabella (1838), Longfellow’s Verses of the Night (1839), and
Lowell’s first volume of verses two years later. Many lesser
writers were following in the wake of these, while the rhetorical
orations of Webster and Everett held audiences enthralled.
It was as though, after an interminable succession of starless
nights, a wind had suddenly arisen, which, sweeping away the
clouds, allowed star after star to shine forth. It is true that
with the exception, perhaps, of Emerson none of them were
of the first magnitude. It is no part of our task here to ap¬
praise the permanent position of these men. Long over¬
praised, due to the void surrounding them and the strong
national sensitiveness of their own generation, it is the duty of
the literary critic rather than of the historian to take their
just measure. What interests us is their sudden appearance,
as indicative both of the change that was coming over the mind
of America and of the influence they exerted.

; Their emergence marked not America’s maturity nor even
its coming of age, but its adolescence — the sudden discovery
of romance, of culture, of altruism, of optimism, of self-reliance,

HUMAN ITARIANISM

353

and the sense of one's own individuality. These are all quali¬
ties of youth, and one is most struck by the youthfulness of
this whole period. It is the spirit of youth that is reflected in
the literature as well as in the life of the times. Bancroft sang
the praises of the new nation and of democracy until, as has
been said, his volumes “voted for Jackson." Longfellow ran¬
sacked literature after literature of Continental Europe in
search of legend and romance to form the subjects of his poems.
Optimism, self-reliance, and the infinite possibilities inherent
in the individual were preached by Emerson and lesser men.
In the humanitarian movements with which the age was rife
we see altruism developing with all the enthusiasm of the
young and untried. In such experiments in living as Brook
Farm, the most significant note is the lyric one of youthful
buoyancy and confidence. The age had its dark side, a deep
shadow under which it lived, but at no other stage in our his¬
tory either before or after do we find so much of the joy of living
translated into practice and genuine idealistic endeavor.*)

This was not an isolated phenomenon in America. We have
always shared in and been influenced by the currents of thought
and life in Europe, sometimes in turn, and — in more ways
than is often recognized — exerting our own refluent influence
upon the older world. At the same period which we are now
describing in New England there was in Europe, in the words
of John Morley, “a great wave of humanity, of benevolence,
of desire for improvement — a great wave of social sentiment,
in short," which “poured itself among all who had the faculty
of large and disinterested thinking." 1 This outburst ended
in several European countries in the revolutions of 1848. In
our country it ended in the Civil War. What we have to
trace, therefore, is only a local manifestation of a world move¬
ment.

The old strict Calvinism had been breaking down for several
generations, as we have seen in earlier chapters. Not only was
religious tolerance slowly growing as between sects, but even
within the Congregational Church itself there was a division
forming with little of the bitterness that would have been
1 Quoted by O. B. Frothingham, George Ripley , (Boston, 1886), p. 109.

354

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

inevitable in the eighteenth century. In 1 805 the Hollis Profes¬
sorship of Divinity at Harvard was given to a Unitarian ; but,
in spite of opposition, strife between the liberal elements and
the stricter Calvinists seems to have been more or less sedu¬
lously avoided on both sides. The growth of the Unitarian
movement within the old Church was, indeed, too obvious to
escape all notice, and occasionally the fires of controversy
burned brightly. In 1815 there was a sudden flare-up in an
attack upon the Liberals led by Dr. Morse, which was answered
by John Lowell, one of the Harvard Corporation. Against their
will the Unitarians were forced to take a more independent
attitude, which was reflected in a sermon preached by William
Ellery Channing in Baltimore, Channing later becoming the
leader of the movement in Boston. A shock was also admin¬
istered to the more strict Congregationalists by a court de¬
cision in 1820, which declared that when a majority of a
church congregation should withdraw, — as they had done
in the case under consideration owing to the election of a Uni¬
tarian clergyman, — the minority which might remain consti¬
tuted the church, with all its property rights.1

In 1826 the controversy, which had been waged on neither
side with any sustained bitterness, became more highly charged
by the calling to Boston of the Reverend Lyman Beecher to
take charge of the Hanover Church, on what came to be known
as “Brimstone Corner.” How far Unitarianism had already
spread at the time of Dr. Beecher’s arrival is described by his
daughter, Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote that “all
the literary men of Massachusetts were Unitarians. All the
trustees and professors of Harvard College were Unitarians.
All the elite of wealth and fashion crowded Unitarian churches.
The judges on the bench were Unitarian, giving decisions by
which the peculiar features of church organization, so care¬
fully ordained by the Pilgrim fathers, had been nullified.” 2
Within a generation Unitarianism, instead of being a form of

1 J. H. Allen, The Unitarians , (New York, 1894), p. 194.

2 Lyman Beecher, Autobiography , vol. II, p. no. Cf. articles in Boston Statesman ,
March 26 and April 2, 1831, complaining of the undue influence of Harvard in politics,
and that Unitarians held too many public offices, including the governorship and all
but one of the Supreme Court judgeships.

HUMANITARIANISM

355

dissent from an established church, with the social disabilities
that such a position usually implies, became the religion of all
the higher social circles of Massachusetts, and Calvinism occu¬
pied the lower social position of dissent.

There was, however, danger in this making Unitarianism the
fashionable religion. It differed from the old Calvinism of
New England in its belief in the fundamental goodness and
soundness of human nature, not denying the existence of sin
and suffering but minimizing them and looking upon both man
and the world with perhaps a somewhat too easy optimism.
Its tone was distinctly ethical and cool, rather than religious
and emotional. These qualities, combined with the prompt
adherence of the wealth and fashion of the state, tended to
check the spirit of openmindedness and liberalism with which
the movement had started, and to render it static. The innate
conservatism of wealth and social position halted the advance,
as tending to threaten the comfortable established order of
things. That this was unconscious and not hypocritical did
not lessen the effect. One of the most illuminating documents
of the period, touching as it does upon almost every aspect of
it, is the letter of resignation written by the Reverend George
Ripley in 1840 — an action to which he had been led in part,
he said, “by the present aspect of the times. . . . This is
very different,” he continued, “from what it was when I be¬
came your minister. In 1826 the Unitarian controversy was
in the ascendant.” The condition of religious thought at that
time “promised well for the future. It awakened the bright¬
est hopes in regard to the practical influence of religion in the
community; to the spread of the pure, disinterested, and
lovely spirit of charity in the various relations of society. . . .
But this state of things it seems could not last forever. It
passed away, and a new order of ideas was brought forward
. . . A portion of the liberal clergy felt it their duty to carry
out these views ; to be faithful to their principles ; not to
shrink from their application . . . but in these conclusions
they were divided from some of their brethren. It was thought
dangerous to continue the progress which had been commenced.
Liberal churches began to fear liberality, and the most heretical

356 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

sect in Christendom to bring the charge of being so against
those who carried out its own principles. ” 1

So long as the Christian minister preaches vaguely and with¬
out in any way threatening the existing order of society, and
above all the question of property, he is considered a pillar of
society; but let him attempt to apply Christ's teaching to
society rather than to the individual and it will be a rare con¬
gregation which will not draw back in fright. Ripley touched the
sore point when he said that “the purpose of Christianity, as I
firmly believe, is to redeem society as well as the individual from
sin.” As a Christian, he said that he believed it to be his duty
to promote temperance, to “aid in the overthrow of every form
of slavery”; that he held it to be a minister’s duty to preach
the gospel to the poor ; and that his most frequent visits should
be “not to the abodes of fashion and luxury but to the dwellings
where not many of the wise and mighty of this world are apt
to enter.” He added that his “warmest sympathies should be
with those who have none to care for them,” and that he should
“never be so much in earnest as when pleading the cause of the
injured.” 2 The church promptly accepted his resignation.

The Unitarian leader, Channing, himself realized the threat¬
ening danger as early as his Baltimore sermon in 1819. “Uni-
tarianism,” he said, “has suffered from union with a heart¬
withering philosophy. . . . Men will not be trifled with.

. . . They want a religion that will take a strong hold upon
them,” as well as (he said elsewhere) “a poetry which pierces
beneath the exterior of life to the depths of the soul.” 3 This
the more ardent souls and those who had, in Morley’s phrase,
“the faculty of large and disinterested thinking,” were to find
in that typically New England form assumed by the spirit of
the age — Transcendentalism. It has recently been said that
this was merely the intellectual and rather dry shape which
European romanticism assumed in America,4 but this is to miss
somewhat of the real spirit of the movement.

1 Frothingham, George Ripley , pp. 66 jf.

2 Ibid., p. 87.

3 Quoted in Cambridge History of American Literature , (New York, 1917), vol. I,
p. 33i.

4 Regis Michaud, Autour d' Emerson, (Paris, 1924), p. 139.

City of Boston from the Harbor, 1853
From an unpublished pen-and-ink sketch by Thomas Kelah Wharton; original in the New York Public Library

HUMANITARIANISM

357

It is, in truth, not easy of definition. There was nothing
new in any part of its philosophical basis, which was mainly
derived from Germany, in part directly and in greater part
through the English writings of Coleridge. It also, to a lesser
extent, had its roots in Greek and Oriental philosophies.1
Interest in German metaphysics had been stirred by the return
to Boston of the young men mentioned above who had studied
at Gottingen, and also by the appointment of Charles T. Follen,
a German political exile, as instructor at Harvard. The inter¬
est broadened, and in 1837 the Reverend Theodore Parker,
in mentioning the additions to his private library in that year,
noted that over a hundred of his new books were in German.2
The word “transcendental” itself was derived from Kant,
but came to be applied in New England in a broad and vague
way to denote whatever was independent of, or transcended,
the experiences of the senses. Ripley, speaking of the move¬
ment, said that its followers believed “in an order of truths
which transcends the sphere of the external senses. Their
leading idea is the supremacy of mind over matter, hence they
maintain that the truth of religion does not depend on tradi¬
tion, nor historical facts, but has an unerring witness in the
soul. There is a light, they believe, which enlighteneth every
man that cometh into the world . . . there is a faculty in all
. . . to perceive spiritual truth when distinctly presented;
and the ultimate appeal on all moral questions is not to a jury
of scholars, a hierarchy of divines, or the prescription of a
creed, but to the common sense of the human race.” 3 This,
of course, was not new, nor was the more or less Platonic form
of its metaphysics, the conception of one vast Soul in the uni¬
verse which embraces all life and with which the soul of the
individual is identical, or the idea that Nature is merely the
sense-garment of this one Over-Soul, or God.

But these somewhat inexperienced and naive philosophers did
not attempt to construct a definite system of philosophy, such

1 Vide the earlier chapters in O. B. Frothingham’s Transcendentalism in New Eng¬
land , (New York, 1876), and Cambridge History of American Literature , vol. I, pp.
346 f.; Woodbridge Riley, American Thought , (New York, 1923), chap. vi.

2 J. Weiss, Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker , (New York, 1864), vol. I,

p. 101. s Frothingham, George Ripley , p. 84.

358 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

as those which were arising in Germany, any more than the
poets followed the romantic lead of Wordsworth or Shelley in
England. New England from the beginning had been deeply
absorbed in the problems of conduct. Perhaps the two most
characteristic products of that section, in tradition and the
popular opinion of the country at large, have been wooden
nutmegs and the New England conscience, incongruous as these
may appear in their respective economic and spiritual spheres.
As every wind of doctrine then blowing seeds of thought about
in Europe blew across New England also, some of the seeds
became planted in the fields of conduct and practical life;
and it was in those fields that the new harvest was brought
forth. Largely as reaction against the tenets of the earlier
Calvinism, and with an intense belief in the goodness and per¬
fectibility of man, in individualism, in optimism, in the im¬
manence of God, and in defiance of authority, creeds, and codes.
Transcendentalism called for “the spontaneous expression in
every possible form of that individual human nature which Cal¬
vinism had thought deserving of confinement and rebuke.” 1

If there was no very definitely formulated system of phi¬
losophy in Transcendentalism, neither did any organization
grow from it. In fact, extreme individualism was its keynote,
and many of the leaders were opposed to organization of any¬
thing in any form. Even the so-called “Transcendental
Club,” at which a number of those interested in the new ideas
used to meet, was simply a gathering of kindred spirits at
irregular intervals. A mere list of those who shared in the
movement in one way or another will suffice to show how broad
and varied were its influences. Among those who attended,
at one time or another, the meetings of the Club were Emerson,
Bronson Alcott, James Freeman Clarke, Theodore Parker,
Margaret Fuller, Orestes Brownson, Thoreau, Hawthorne,
Follen, Elizabeth and Sophia Peabody, and William E. Chan-
ning, while Ripley, Charles A. Dana, and others appear in the
Brook Farm days. The list, of course, could be greatly extended.

The intellectual and spiritual leader of the whole movement

1 Barrett Wendell and C. N. Greenough, A History of Literature in America , (New
York, 1904), p. 253.

HUMANITARIANISM

359

was undoubtedly Emerson, though he held aloof from some of
the practical — or impractical — experiments and from the
vagaries of the “lunatic fringe.” He resigned as pastor of his
church because he had come to disbelieve in the administering
of the Communion as other than a commemorative rite, but
he was, nevertheless, through his lectures and writings, a
preacher all his life rather than a philosopher. There is no
reasoned system of thought in his work, but flashes of insight
into the deepest and highest matters of the universe and of life,
which lie scattered — and often bewilderingly disconnected
— all through his essays. It was not so much his doctrines of
the immanence or even the benevolence of God in the universe
that moved his readers as it was his stirring message to the
individual soul. In a generation in which society and con¬
vention were rigid to an extent we little realize now, such
insistence upon self-development and self-reliance as we find
in the essay by that title rang like trumpet calls to a new life.
“There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at
the conviction that imitation is suicide” ; “What I must do is
all that concerns me, not what the people think”; “My life
is for itself and not for a spectacle”; “A foolish consistency
is the hobgoblin of little minds”; “Insist on yourself, never
imitate”; “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron
string.” 1 Emerson’s note is a buoyant optimism. We should
not look in his writings for system or for consistency ; but they
are a perpetual fountain of spiritual energy, to bathe in which
is to reinvigorate the soul. Such phrases as “hitch your wagon
to a star” have an electric effect on character and will, far
beyond any meaning that may be assigned to them.

There was much fun poked at the Transcendentalists in their
day, owing to the vagaries of the less balanced among them
and more particularly to the “practical” man’s humorous
contempt for the dreamer. It is odd how seriously the “prac¬
tical man” always takes himself. He feels that he is the
atlas on whose shoulders all society rests. Yet it is to the
man who is considered impractical in his day that society owes
every advance it has ever made. Somehow the dreamers win

1 Works , Boston, 1903, vol. II, essay, “Self Reliance,” passim.

36o NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

while the practical man, striving with all his might to keep
things as they are, goes down to dust and is forgotten. He is
the backbone of society; but in glorying in his own function
he is apt to forget the far more important and delicate function
of the brain. Among the very wildest ideas of the “cranks”
of the 1830’s and 1 840’s were the abolition of slavery, temper¬
ance, the right of women to speak in public, and the founding
of a League of Nations. Yet, in the years that have passed,
slavery has been abolished ; prohibition, wisely or not, has been
written into the Constitution; women occupy a position then
undreamed of even by the cranks ; and the League is function¬
ing at Geneva, though America is not there.

The Woman’s Rights movement, as an organized one, did
not get under way in the period covered by this volume, and
may therefore to a great extent be ignored, the first conven¬
tion of suffragists being held in Massachusetts in 1850. Women,
however, were beginning to take their place with men in the
various social movements, and in so doing the question of
their relative status was necessarily agitated. The advance
made in the 1840’s was in their winning the right not only to
appear but to vote and speak at Antislavery meetings and
those of the Peace Societies; in working on equal terms with
men in such experiments as Brook Farm; and in the work of
such women as the Grimke sisters and Dorothea Dix. Educa¬
tional facilities for women, even in the higher branches, were
also rapidly improving, evidencing a new sentiment as to
woman’s sphere and status.

Of the various efforts made by the Transcendentalists to
translate their theory into practice, none other had quite the
air of romance and of Arcadian simplicity possessed by Brook
Farm. The idea of a community, in which a limited number
of people might live on more or less cooperative lines and enjoy
a better life than in the world of competition outside, was in the
air in the second decade of the century. In 1825 Robert Owen,
the English socialist, had founded his New Harmony Society
by the Wabash River, and in the following year a dozen or more
were established elsewhere.1 In 1841 the Reverend Adin

1 W. A. Hinds, American Communities , (Chicago, 1908), p. 139.

HUMANITARIANISM

36 1

Ballou founded the Hopedale Community at Mendon, Massa¬
chusetts, which lasted for seventeen years.1 This “miniature
Christian republic,” as its founder called it, caught up all the
social and humanitarian ideas of the time. Essentially religious,
although wholly tolerant and nonsectarian, it stood among
other things for “tee-total temperance,” antislavery, woman’s
rights, nonresistance, cooperation, and “Christian socialism.”
Started a year earlier and long outlasting Brook Farm, it had
not, owing to its personnel, either the influence at the time or
the romantic glamour since, which have attached to the more
famous experiment.

The projects of communities had greatly appealed to the
Reverend George Ripley, and when he resigned his pastorate
his thoughts turned to the establishment of some form of
society which might “insure a more natural union between
intellectual and manual labor . . . guarantee the highest
mental freedom, by providing all with labor adapted to their
tastes and talents,” and in which a more wholesome and simple
life might be led by intelligent and cultivated persons than was
possible under “the pressure of our competitive institutions.” 2
After having bought Brook Farm at West Roxbury, Massa¬
chusetts, and gathered a few comrades, the association was
organized in the autumn of 1841. Until it was altered in 1845
along the lines of Fourierism, it was hardly an organization at
all, but a mere aggregate of kindred spirits who worked in the
fields or about the cattle, did the housework, danced and sang,
discussed every topic under the sun, and had what almost all
of its members recalled in later years as the happiest time of
their existence. There was a school for the children, a large
number of the members were young unmarried people, and an
air of youth hangs pleasantly about the whole experiment.
Not a breath of scandal was heard about the life ; only one
death occurred; and one is impressed as much by the high
spirits and joyousness of the place as by its earnest effort to
labor happily with head and hand at once.

1 Ibid., pp. 232 ff.; Adin Ballou, History of the Hopedale Community , (Lowell, 1897),
chaps, i-iii.

2 Lindsay Swift, Brook Farm , (New York, 190x2), pp. 15 /.

36i NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

Over two hundred persons were connected with it at one time
or another, among them being Charles A. Dana, Hawthorne,
George William Curtis and his brother, and others of lesser
note though no less strongly marked personality. In the
school, among the thirty scholars gathered by the second year
were Margaret Fuller’s youngest brother and the two little
sons of George Bancroft.1 Visitors trooped to see the experi¬
ment in action, it being said that there were over four thousand
in one year. Among them were such distinguished persons as
Emerson, Channing, Alcott, Margaret Fuller, Horace Greeley,
W. W. Story, Lydia Maria Child, Parke Godwin, Orestes
Brownson, Elizabeth Peabody, Albert Brisbane, Robert Owen,
and many more, some of them having fairly close relations to
the work, whereas others came only for a visit of curiosity.2

It is impossible as well as needless to relate the story of the
Farm in detail. The reasons for failure were obvious. Ripley
might find milking “eminently favorable to contemplation”
when “the cow’s tail was looped up behind,” but Hawthorne,
trailing at the end of a rope, at the other and controlling end
of which was the insurgent “Transcendental heifer,” found
farm life less conducive to the intellectual. Nevertheless, in
spite of the fact that the personnel of the membership became
more commonplace after the industrial experiment of Fourier¬
ism was tried in 1845, the community was finally broken up
with the same kindly feeling and good humor that had marked
its whole course. Although from a practical standpoint the
Farm may be put down as a failure, it cannot be considered
as wholly so. The joy of living which seemed to come to all
its members, the ease with which men of the working classes, of
whom there were many, lived and mingled with their more
intellectual fellow-members, the charm which even the visitors
felt to hang about the place, the feeling of fellowship, all com¬
bined to form an influence which was felt then and is felt now
as the story is read again. It may be that, just as many of the
other dreams of the “cranks” of that time have become living
realities in our lives to-day, so the dream of the Brook Farmers

1 Swift, op. cit ., pp. 72 ff.; J. T. Codman, Brook Farm , (Boston, 1894), PP* SI S'

2 Swift, op. cit., pp. 206 ff.; Codman, op. cit., pp. 80 ff.

1

HUMANITARIANISM

363

of the dignity of labor and of a society based on plain living
and high thinking, on mutual helpfulness instead of individual
selfishness, may yet come to regenerate human society in
some form which we cannot now foresee.1

On none of the evils of the day did the interest and efforts
of reformers of all sorts converge with better and more im¬
mediate effect than upon those in the education of children.
The complete inertia of those whose function it should have
been to lead the community was attacked from two directions
— on the one hand by those among the intellectual class who
had been touched by the Transcendental and humanitarian
currents of the day, and on the other by the labor leaders and
organizations, whose every demand for better wages, shorter
hours, or better education was considered “revolutionary” by
a large proportion of the capitalists. It is not intended to
make this generalization too sweeping, for there were some
among the manufacturers who did take an interest in the wel¬
fare of their employees ; but the chief pressure for bettering
conditions came neither from the main body of the rich nor
from the rural population, but from a few idealists and from the
labor organizations.

New England has always prided itself upon its system of
common schools, and to a certain extent justly so, for even at
this period reading and writing were more widely diffused
among the people of that section than in the rest of America
or in England. But this should not blind us to the fact that
conditions were atrocious. “It seems to be the destiny of
New England, and eminently so of New Hampshire, to pro¬
duce mind,” said the Commissioner of Education of that state
complacently, in his report for 1847; but it must be confessed
that New England in the preceding decades had not been tak¬
ing so much care of the mind produced as it might.

Anyone who has had the illuminating experience of sitting
on modern boards of education in small communities knows
well how, when the question of spending money is fought to

1 It is not necessary to do more than call attention to the smaller experiment in
simple living mixed with metaphysics which Bronson Alcott tried at Fruitlands. Vide
C. E. Sears, Bronson Alcott' s Fruitlands , (Boston, 1915).

364 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

the last ditch, the ideal of “the little red schoolhouse” of old
New England is trotted out as a reproach to the useless luxury
of the present age. Let us take a look at not one but thou¬
sands of those little red schoolhouses as they existed in New
England and New York in the period of this chapter. A de¬
scription of those in the latter state may be quoted, for condi¬
tions were precisely similar in New England, as is amply
testified by trustworthy evidence, though we have no such
vigorous and brief description. In 1846 Miss Catherine
Beecher, commenting on the report of the superintendent of
schools in New York for 1844, said that “the nakedness and
deformity of the schools, the comfortless and dilapidated
buildings, the unhung doors, broken sashes, absent panes,
stilted benches, yawning roofs, and muddy, mouldering floors,
are faithfully portrayed ; and many of the self-styled teachers,
who lash and dogmatize in these miserable tenements of human¬
ity, are shown to be low, vulgar, obscene, intemperate, and
utterly incompetent to teach anything good. . . . [Of the
schoolhouses] only one third of the whole number were found
in good repair; another third in only comfortable circum¬
stances; while 3319 were unfit for the reception of either man
or beast. 7000 we found destitute of any playground, nearly
6000 destitute of convenient seats and desks, and nearly 8000
destitute of any proper facilities for ventilation ; while 6000
were destitute of outdoor facilities for securing modesty and
decency.” 1 She stated that the ordinary schoolhouse had
become “a pesthouse, fraught with the deadly malaria of both
moral and physical disease.” And it was in such places, she
continued, deprived of wholesome air, with no proper facilities
for study, “driven by dire necessity to violate the most common
rules of decency and modesty, that upward of 600,000 children
of this state are compelled to spend an average of eight months
each year.”

In Connecticut the report of the School Commissioners in
1841 stated that in more than seven eighths of all the school¬
rooms visited in that state the amount of air per child was less

1 C. E. Beecher, The Evils Suffered by American Women and Children , (New York,
1846), p. 4.

HUMANITARIANISM

365

than one half that considered necessary for the prisoners in the
state prison at Wethersfield or the county jails of Hartford,
New Haven, and Norwich.1 The report of 1848 drew a damn¬
ing picture of conditions such as the lack of ventilation, im¬
proper heating and lighting, torturing seats, and “the fact,
so outrageous to common decency, that most of the school-
houses have no out-buildings whatever.” That at Suffield,
for example, located in the middle of the highway and in an
exposed situation, had none of the facilities “required by mod¬
esty.” Of the 1663 schoolhouses in the state, 873 had out¬
houses and 745 had none. “This fact,” says the report from
Vernon, “is, undoubtedly a burning shame and a deep disgrace
to the State. It is unworthy of a civilized country, and indi¬
cates a state of things that ought to exist only among savages.” 2

In 1839, in a survey made in one county, of forty school-
houses only one had any means of ventilation, yet the average
size of these child-pens was eighteen and a half feet long, seven
and a half wide and only seven feet high. Into each of them
was crowded an average of thirty children.3 No wonder that
The Common School Journal spoke of “the slave-ship stowage
of children,” and contrasted the buildings for the youngsters
with those which enterprising farmers were then erecting for
their hogs, with “promenades.” 4

In New Hampshire, in 1847, “multitudes” of the school-
houses were pronounced to be “absolutely dangerous to health
and morals,” and this in the most flourishing villages as well
as in the rural districts.5 In Rhode Island the first survey of
the situation was made in 1843-44, and it was found that of the
405 schools supposed to be in existence under the laws, only
312 were actually so; that these were mostly in bad shape,
and, as usual, “had no places of retirement for either sex.” 6

1 3rd Annual Report , Board of Commissioners of Common Schools , Connecticuty (Hart¬
ford, 1841), p. 16.

2 3rd Annual Report of the Superintendent of Common Schools of Connecticut , 1848,
pp. 11 3/., 1 18.

3 1st Annual Report , Board of Commissioners of Common Schools , Connecticut , 1839,
p. 64. 4 Vol. IV, pp. 66, 69, [1842].

5 Report of the Commissioner of Common Schools , New Hampshire , 1847, p. 13.

6 Report on the Condition and Improvement of the Public Schools of Rhode Island ,
1846, pp. 30, 32.

366 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

Massachusetts seems to have been somewhat better off, but the
same complaints come from Maine and Vermont. . Indeed, in
the latter as late as 1857, 760 houses were reported as “bad,”
“miserable,” or “unfit for use.” 1

Complaints of the ability and frequently of the character
of the teachers were as numerous and apparently as well founded
as those against the buildings. The one idea throughout
New England seems to have been to spend as little as possible.
In Massachusetts the average wages paid to a woman teacher
were just on a level with those paid to the lowest in the mills
and only about one half those paid to skilled female labor.
The average wages, exclusive of board, paid to the women was
$6. 49 a month and to men $23. io.2

Even these poor facilities, however, were not offered to all
the children, and it is not too much to say that only a moderate
proportion had more than irregular schooling for a few weeks
a year. No exact statistics are available, but there are plenty
of indications of general conditions. In Massachusetts, for
example, in 1839 it was stated by the Board of Education that
of twenty-nine “rich and populous towns” which had failed
the previous year to maintain a school as required by law, only
two had complied in the current year, twenty-seven being still
recalcitrant.3 In Maine, some years later, the average length
of time that all schools were open ran from eight weeks and
five days to thirteen weeks and four days, for all counties.4
In Vermont, of the 100,000 children of school age, less than
10,000 had as much as 70 days a year; 6500 attended for only
20-30 days, 5600 from 10-20, 4300 for less than 10 days, while
18,000 had no schooling at all.5 The story was the same in
Rhode Island. Of 30,000 children, 11,000 attended no school
for any part of the year ; 5000, or only one sixth of the whole,
may have had a full year each, but the average attendance was

1 1st Report of the Board of Education of Maine, 1847, p. 16 ; 1st Annual Report , Secre¬
tary Board of Education, Vermont, 1857, p. 22.

2 Common School Journal, vol. II, p. 28. Figures do not vary greatly for the other
states, and may be found in the annual reports of the Boards or Commissioners.

3 2d Annual Report, Mass. Board of Education, 1839.

4 1st Report of Board of Education , 1 847, p. 20.

5 2d Annual Report, Superintendent of Common Schools, 1847, p. 22.

HUMANITARIANISM

367

only ij^oo.1 In Connecticut, out of 70,000 children, 20,000
never went to school at all, with the exception of a moderate
deduction to be made for those rich enough to attend private
schools and academies.2 Much of the nonattendance was in
the factory villages and closely related to child labor, which
will be discussed later. It must also be remembered that al¬
though Negroes were taxed, Negro children, as a rule, were not
allowed in the schools.3

Public opinion, however, was rapidly being aroused to the
conditions, and as may be noted from the citations in the notes
above, all the states were establishing boards of education of
one sort or another, in the reports of which facts were being
presented year by year that could not fail to arouse resentment
and a desire for betterment. Massachusetts, under the able
leadership of Horace Mann, improved rapidly, and Mann’s
ideas and influence extended throughout the entire country.
There was progress in this period also in the academies and
colleges, but the notable advance was in the facilities afforded
for the education of the children of the poorer classes, and the
insistence of the more intelligent element in those classes upon
their right, both as men and as citizens, to a fair chance to gain
knowledge.

[ The chief characteristic, indeed, of the period is just this
insistence upon the rights of man as man, and not as a member
of a special class. Almost every movement of the times was
prompted by a recognition of the rights of human nature to
free expression and to as full a development as it might prove
capable of. Democracy was coming into its own, and express¬
ing itself rather in terms of the brotherhood of human beings
than in those of abstract equality in political rights and obli¬
gations. Looked at from the standpoint of the broad humani-
tarianism of the 1830’s and 1840’s, the doctrinaire equality-
philosophy of the Revolutionary period seems narrow and
coldly intellectual. The “people,” to whom so many appeals

1 Report on Condition , op. cit., pp. 35/.

2 2d Annual Report , Board of Commissioners of Common Schools , 1840, pp. 20 ff.

3 1st Annual Report, Board of Commissioners of Common Schools , Connecticut , 1839,

PP- 33/-

368 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

had been made in the propaganda of 1776, was at that time but
a select privileged class among the population, whose “rights’'
were based not on their character as men but on the fact that
they happened to be property-holders. By the time of the
period covered by this chapter not only had such political
rights as the suffrage been so broadly extended as to include
almost all adult males, — except in Rhode Island, — but the
far more important rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness,” which had been so glibly promised a half-century
before, were at last beginning to acquire a significance in prac¬
tice. The right to the pursuit of happiness was no longer
confined to those who had freehold estates of a certain value
and to those who were strong enough in mind and body to win
their own way. It was beginning to embrace the poor and
unsuccessful, the debtors, those in prison, the blind, the insane,
the weak of will. In the remainder of this chapter we shall
consider briefly what was being done for the amelioration of
the condition of such as these. ^

As has frequently been noticed in the course of our narrative,
the rights which the Federalists considered paramount to all
others were those of property. The rights which the people
had been taught to expect in the war propaganda of ’7 6 were
those of man. It was the conflict between these two concep¬
tions which slowly worked itself out in the continuation of the
Revolution — a continuation no less real because peaceful.

Perhaps no other law which was theoretically equal for all
men pressed more hardly on the poor as a class than that of
imprisonment for debt. For one rich man who, overtaken by
misfortune, found himself in a debtor’s prison in America, there
were constantly thousands of the poor. It was estimated in
1829 that there were 75,000 persons confined in jail for debt,
and more than half of these were for sums of less than twenty
dollars. The following year it was said that three thousand
persons were annually imprisoned in Massachusetts, and a
number proportionate to population in the other New England
states. In Boston alone, in 1830, fourteen hundred persons,
including one hundred women, were jailed, most of them for
owing trifling amounts. Among cases which may be cited

HUMANITARIANISM

369

were those of a blind man with a dependent family, who was
imprisoned for a debt of six dollars ; a widow in Providence who
was jailed for owing sixty-eight cents to a man in an attempt
to save whose property her husband had lost his life ; and of a
man seventy-six years of age in Salem, a veteran of Bunker
Hill, who was kept in jail for owing a few dollars.1
( Reformers began to point out the absurdity as well as the
injustice of locking up an honest laboring man whose only
chance to pay his debts was his ability to work.) As early as
1820 a small magazine was started in Boston, called The Debtors'
Journal , devoted to the reform of this abuse.2 Such papers as
The Manufacturers' and Farmers' Journal of Providence com¬
plained that the law and practice were a “reproach on the
sense and intelligence of the state.” 3 Successive governors of
Massachusetts denounced the practice in frequent messages ;
individual reformers and such bodies as the Prison Discipline
Society of Boston condemned it ; and the Workingmen's Party
brought its whole strength to bear; but the laws were con¬
tinued — due, it was said, to “ a secret influence among us,
which works behind the curtain, and controls our reason and
interest.” 4 Little by little the pressure of public opinion,
and more particularly working-class opinion, made itself felt,
and in the i83o’s and 1840's the New England states were
forced to modify the laws, so as virtually to abandon imprison¬
ment except in cases of fraud, the fraud and not the debt being
the crime.5

The condition of the jails, both for debtors and for criminals
of all sorts, was extremely bad. Overcrowding was in itself a

1 Commons, Hist, of Labor, vol. I, pp. 178 /.

2 Of the prisoners in the Boston jail that December, thirty were for debt. Debtors'
Journal , vol. I, p. 62.

3 Issue of Aug. 31, 1829; cf. The Liberator , Feb. 5, 1831 ; Christian Herald , Jan. 15,
1831 ; Boston Statesman , Nov. 27, 1830.

4 Commons, op. cit., p. 329.

5 Vide Acts , Legislature , Vermont, 1826, pp. 109 jf. ; Laves of New Hampshire , 1922,
vol. X, p. 1831 ; Laws of New Hampshire , New Series , 1840, c. DXLVII; Public Acts ,
Maine, Jan. Sess. 1831, c. DXX; An Act for Relief of Insolvent Debtors , Maine, 1840;
Public Laws of Rhode Island , 1844, sec. VIII ; Laws of Massachusetts, 1834, c. CLXVII ;
Independent Chronicle, Jan. 16, 1836; Acts and Resolves, Winter Sess., Mass., 1842,
c. LVI; Mass. House Doct. No. 24, 1842; Connecticut Courant, July 20, 1835; Public
Statutes, Conn., 1837, c. XCVII; Public Acts of Conn., May Sess., 1842, c. XXIII;
Hartford Times, May 31, 1845.

370

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

great evil in the consequences that ensued. In New Bedford,
for example, sixteen debtors were at one time confined in a
room less than twenty feet square.1 This applied to the poor-
houses — where there were such — as well as to the jails, the
House of Industry, in Boston, crowding over seven persons
on an average into each of its eighty-seven rooms, the children
and adults being herded together indiscriminately.2 It was
the practice in many of the prisons to place all the prisoners in
one large room for the night — with consequences which may
easily be imagined. Probably the worst prison of all was that
known as “the Old Prison” in Connecticut, where it was stated,
in a report made in 1827, that “there probably has never been
on earth a stronger emblem of the pit, than the sleeping rooms
of that Prison, so filthy, so crowded, so inclined to evil, so unre¬
strained.” The prisoners even used to volunteer to sleep “in
the dungeons seventy feet below ground, because they were
free to commit anything they wanted there.” 3 Other reports
of the moral conditions of this hell are indescribably shocking.
Old and young, the most depraved criminals and little children
incarcerated for petty offenses were all kept together.

About 1820 pamphlets and articles begin to appear calling
attention to conditions, and two years later Josiah Quincy
published a severe indictment of the whole system.4 Largely
under the leadership of the Prison Discipline Society, organized
in 1825, a slow reform began.5 Prisoners were segregated;
were separated in cells at night ; work was provided. The sell¬
ing of the product of prison labor and the hiring of prisoners to
contractors, however, aroused the opposition of free labor,

1 Commons, op. cit., p. 179.

2 Report of the Commissioners on the Pauper Surplus of Massachusetts, Mass. House
Doct. No. 6, 1 8 33, p. 45. The custom of auctioning off the poor of towns to those who bid
lowest for their support was still practised in many towns, and was evidently just
beginning at this time to give way to newer and more humane methods. Ibid., pp.
83/.

3 2d Report of the Prison Discipline Society, (Boston, 1827), p. 17.

4 A Dialogue on the Penitentiary System , Boston, 1820; State Prisons and the Peni¬
tentiary System Vindicated, Charlestown, 1821; Remarks on Some of the Provisions of
the Laws of Massachusetts Affecting Poverty, Vice and Crime, (Cambridge, 1822).
“Strangers,” said Quincy, “who know nothing of our laws but in the statute books, will
wonder and admire at the providence of our legislature. But citizens, who know facts
and see effects, must feel something like contempt for such provisions.” Ibid., p. 18.

5 1st Annual Report of the Prison Discipline Society, (Boston, 1826).

HUMANITARIANISM

37i

which complained of the unfair competition.1 In line with
the general tendencies of the day, there was considerable agi¬
tation for the abolition of the death penalty and the substitu¬
tion of imprisonment for life.2

It is to the feeling that, whatever the accidental circum¬
stances might be in which a man was placed, he should never¬
theless be treated as a man and given every possible opportu¬
nity, that we may trace the new attitude toward the blind, the
deaf and dumb, and the insane. In 1829 the first attempt
was made to ameliorate the condition of the blind by opening
new channels of enjoyment to them and training them to be
self-supporting. In that year the Perkins Institute for the
Education of the Blind was incorporated, although it was not
in operation until five years later. The inmates were instructed
in various trades and had the good fortune to be taught music
by Lowell Mason.3

In 1815 a group of men in Hartford, among whom were
Ward Woodbridge, Daniel Wadsworth, the Reverend Nathan
Strong, and others, agreed to establish a school for deaf-mutes,
and the Reverend Thomas H. Gallaudet was chosen to go to
Europe and study methods of instruction. To his surprise, he
found on arrival in England that for two generations teaching
deaf-mutes had been a monopoly in the hands of one family —
a monopoly so heartless that permission had always been re¬
fused to allow schools to be established in Ireland, “and so
grasping that at the moment of Gallaudet’s visit to England a
member of the family, of doubtful reputation and unsteady
habits, was in America seeking to establish the monopoly in
the New World.” 4 Unable to make any progress in Great
Britain, Gallaudet went to Paris, where he learned the method
of instruction in vogue there, and returning to Connecticut
in 1816, opened an institution for teaching in the following

1 Commons, op. cit., pp. 34 6/.; cf. Report of the Committee on the Connecticut State
Prison to the General Assembly , (New Haven, 1842).

2 Cf-> e-g; Mass. House Doct. No. 15, 1831 ; ibid., No. 43, 1837 ; and the discussions
in the Independent Chronicle and other journals during 1836.

3 Address of the Trustees of the New England Institution for the Blind , (Boston, 1833),
passim.

4 E. M. Gallaudet, Life of Thomas H. Gallaudet , (New York, 1888), p. 59.

372

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

year.1 For a long time it remained the only one of its kind,
all the other New England states assisting in its support with
the exception of Rhode Island.2

Although the Massachusetts General Hospital, chartered
in 1 8 1 1, opened its first department in 1 8 1 8 as the McLean
Asylum for the Insane, no other place of refuge for persons
of unsound mind was available until the opening of the State
Asylum at Worcester in 1833.3 Throughout the whole United
States, and indeed the world, the treatment of these unfortu¬
nates had scarcely improved since the Middle Ages, when in
1841 Miss Dorothea Dix became interested in them and began
her wonderful life-work for the improvement of their condi¬
tion. After spending two years in a painstaking investigation
into the care and treatment of such persons by the public
authorities throughout the whole of Massachusetts, she ad¬
dressed a long memorial to the legislature in 1843, stating what
she had found as to “the present state of insane persons con¬
fined within this Commonwealth, in cages , closets , cellars , stalls ,
pens; chained , naked , beaten with rods , and lashed into obedi¬
ence!” 4 The conditions revealed were so frightful and the
carefully collected evidence so overwhelming that public opin¬
ion swept aside the attempts of the politicians to block any
relief, and an Act was passed providing for the accommodation
of two hundred more patients at the State Hospital under
proper conditions. Miss Dix, who was one of the most remark¬
able women New England has produced, then proceeded to
carry out similar work in Rhode Island, and eventually covered
state after state of the Union and even several countries of
Europe, in her self-appointed and marvelously successful work
of benevolence.

Intemperance in the use of liquor had always been as rife in
Puritan New England as elsewhere, and grew worse after the
Revolution. The first serious effort to check it by organ¬
ized action, however, did not occur until after the War of

1 Report of the Committee of the Connecticut Asylum for the Education and Instruction
of Deaf and Dumb Persons , (Hartford, 1817).

2 Christian Register , July 25, 1829.

3 F. B. Sanborn, The Public Charities of Massachusetts , (Boston, 1876), p. 39.

4 Francis Tiffany, Life of Dorothea L. Dix , (Boston, 1890), pp. 76 ff.

HUMANITARIANISM

373

1812.1 There was an immense amount of drinking, not only
among the laity but among the clergy; and in 1811, after his
experience at two ordinations, where the room in which the as¬
sembled clergy met “looked and smelled like the bar of a very ac- .
tive grog-shop,” Lyman Beecher became disgusted and made
up his mind to attack the evil in his usual vigorous fashion.2
Although the General Association of the Presbyterian Church
was lukewarm on the subject, Beecher secured action by it the
following year, and the campaign was on. In 1813 the Massa¬
chusetts Society for the Suppression of Intemperance, the
parent of all subsequent organizations, was formed, and by
1820 was recommending legal action by the state to prevent
drinking.3 The evil was not materially lessened, and condi¬
tions were extremely bad.4 It was, indeed, high time that a
reform should be instituted, and the temperance movement
shared in the general outburst of reform and humanitarianism
from 1825 onward. The Medical Societies of both Massachu¬
setts and New Hampshire passed resolutions favoring absti¬
nence, and the movement spread even among the sailors in the
navy, three hundred and twenty-six out of four hundred and
eighty-six men becoming total abstainers on the frigate Brandy¬
wine ! 5 The fourth Report of the American Temperance
Society, in 1830, stated that more than one hundred and fifty
vessels had sailed from Boston with no liquor on board; and
in the following year there were reported to be one hundred
and forty temperance societies in Maine, ninety-six in New
Hampshire, a hundred and thirty-two in Vermont, two hundred
and nine in Massachusetts, twenty-one in Rhode Island, and
two hundred and two in Connecticut.6

In 1838 a memorial signed by fifteen hundred persons was
presented to the Massachusetts legislature, asking that the

1 The first organized effort was that of Ephraim Kirby and thirty-four others of
Litchfield County, Connecticut, who agreed to abstain from liquor and to make their
employees do so, in 1787. This, however, was merely local and isolated. G. F.
Clark, History of Temperance Reform in Massachusetts , (Boston, 1888), p. 5.

2 Autobiography , vol. I, pp. 245 ff.; A. F. Fehlandt, A Century of Drink Reform in the

United States , (Cincinnati, 1904), PP* 39 f- 3 Ibid., pp. 8, 12.

4 The Reminiscences of Neal Dow , (Portland, 1898), pp. 1 56 ff.

5 Permanent Temperance Documents , (New York, 1852), vol. I, pp. 21, 35.

6 Ibid., p. 38.

374

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

sale of liquor be made a penal offence, and as result the so-called
“ Fifteen-Gallon Law” was passed, forbidding sale of less than
fifteen gallons at a time except on medical prescription.1 Ac¬
tive war on the law was at once started, and a petition for its
repeal was signed by seventeen hundred citizens, but petitions
remonstrating against repeal were then presented with the
signatures of thirty-two thousand men and thirty-four thou¬
sand women. Meanwhile, many towns had taken local action,
and by 1837 six counties out of fourteen in Massachusetts had
gone dry. The years from 1831 to 1837 have been called “the
Golden Age of temperance literature,” and the distribution of
tracts was enormous. Mrs. Halsey's Who Slew All These?
sold by the hundred-thousand, and two million copies of the
Reverend Eli Merrill’s famous “ox sermon” are said to have
been distributed in one year.2 John B. Gough, the most noted
of the temperance speakers, began his public work in 1842,
and was soon followed by Neal Dow.3 It was not until just
after 1850, and so beyond our period, that the so-called Maine
Law was widely adopted by practically all the New England
states.

Scarcely any suggested reform failed, in this epoch, to be¬
come organized and loudly vocal, and many of them became
intertwined in the same organizations and movements.
William Lloyd Garrison, for example, although first and fore¬
most the leader of the Abolitionists, undertook to advance
among other causes those of woman’s rights and of universal
peace. It was a sign of the general ferment of the times.
The peace movement, like a number of the others, may be said
to date from the War of 1812, but it was not until the decades
covered by this chapter that it became widespread. Several
publications had appeared on the subject by the time that the
New York, Massachusetts, Ohio, and London Peace Societies
were organized, all independently of one another, in 1815 and
1 8 1 6.4 The American Peace Society was founded in New

1 Clark, Temperance Reform , pp. 40 /. 2 Fehlandt, op. cit., pp. 67 /.

* Autobiography and Personal Recollections of John B. Gough, (Springfield, 1869);
Reminiscences of Neal Dow , op. cit.

4 American Advocate of Peace , (Hartford), vol. I, pp. 5 f. Cf. The Friend of Peace,
(n. p.), pp. 33/.

PROGRAMME OF THE

MIDDLETOWN, Oct. 20, 27, 3 843

Tuesday , The Connecticut Temperance So¬

ciety will commence its Annual Meeting in the North
Cong. Church, at 2 o’clock P. M. Hon. Chief Justice
WILLIAMS, President The Society will proceed im¬
mediately to the appointment of Committees, and as far
as time will permit, will hear reports of the Delegates
from County and local Societies.

Tuesday Evening. — ANNUAL REPORT of the State Society, and several Address¬
ee, at the North Church-

Wednesday Momintr-b TEMPERANCE PROCESSION

will be formed on the South Green, under the direction of LINUS COE, Esq.,
Chief Marshal, aided by Messrs, Wm. S. ('amp, John L. Smith, Edward Treadway, J. H«
Morrow, Charles W. Newton, Geo. E. Taylor, and Norman Smith, Assistant Marshals.

ORDER OF PROCESSION.

Chief Marshal, and Aid, on Horseback.
iT|usic.

Sabbath Schools, and other Children and Youths.

Connecticut Temperance Society and Visiting Strangora.

Washington Temperance Societies.

Faculty and Students of Wesleyan University.

Citizens.

Assistant Marshal on Horseback.

The Procession will form in the above order, at 10 o’clock A. M. and passing through
William, Broad, Washington and Main streets, will return to the south Green.

Sabbath Schools and other children and youths, will repair to the South Congregational
Church, and be addressed by Nathan Crosby, Esq. Secretary of the Mass. Temperance Un¬
ion, and Commander in Chief of the Mass. Cold Water Army, and by several other Gentle*
men.

All others will repair to the Methodist Church, and be-addressed by Messrs Pollard and
Wright of Baltimore, hnd other distinguished laborers in the cause.

Wednesday Afternoon , and also in the Evening , the Meetings of the State Society
will be continued in the North Church, to hear addresses, and discuss important Reso¬
lutions.

The “Hurrah for bright Water,” and other Temperance Music, to be sung, and the Tem*

C trance Hymn Books to be used in these meetings, may be obtained at the Bookstore of
uke C Lyman, opposite the Post office, where Delegates, and visiting strangers will record
their names, ana be directed to accommodations.

Temperance Convention Program, 1841

Library of Congress

376 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

York in 1828, and after that similar associations became very
numerous, particularly in the New England states, where not
only state but county and other local societies were formed.1
The movement does not seem to have taken deep root in public
interest, and as one goes through the reports of the various
societies one is impressed by the seeming fact that they were
being carried along without support, and by a small group of
enthusiasts.

The movement, however, brought forth one remarkable man,
William Ladd, who was born in New Hampshire but later
lived in Maine. Becoming intensely interested in the question
of universal peace, he yet maintained a common-sense view of
the difficulties, and had little use for the wilder extremists. To
Garrison, when the latter was instrumental in forming the New
England Non-Resistance Society, he wrote that “there is such
a thing as going beyond the millenium. I am content to stop
there.” 2 Ladd’s own sanity and remarkable grasp of the
realities of international relations were shown in his Essay on a
Congress of Nations, which he wrote in 1840.3 The scheme of
an international court, as outlined by him, was presented,
unaltered, at the Peace Conferences held at Brussels in 1848,
at Paris in 1849, at Frankfort in 1850, and at London in 1851.
Eventually both his plans for a Congress of Powers to agree
upon principles of international law and the erection of a court
were carried out at The Hague, and followed very closely the
lines laid down by this New Englander eighty years before.
His name is probably unknown to all but a few specialists,
and his fate is an example of that “conflict with oblivion”
waged with death, which has so many strange results. Yet
few men in the New England of his day have had a more last¬
ing or a wider influence throughout the whole world, and none
had a clearer or more far-seeing mind.

1 The reports of many of these may be found scattered through the issues of The
Advocate of Peace (Hartford, 1834-35), and The Calumet , 1831-34.

2 John Hemmenway, Memoir of William Ladd , (Boston, 1872), p. 77.

3 It was republished by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and edited
by J. B. Scott, (New York, 1916).

William Ladd, Pioneer of International Peace
From a portrait in the possession of Dr. William E. Ladd of Boston

CHAPTER XVI

STRIFE

Maine Boundary Dispute — Dorr War in Rhode Island —
Irish Immigration — Business Recovery — Large Profits of
Manufacturers — Wages — Housing and Working Conditions
of Labor — Changes in Factory Personnel — Discovery of Gold
in California

While William Ladd was organizing Peace Societies and
planning an international court for the arbitration of contro¬
versies between sovereign Powers, a dispute between his own
state and Great Britain, which had been smouldering for fifty
years, was rapidly nearing a flaming-up into war. From the
time of the signing of the Treaty of Peace after the Revolution,
the question of the northern boundary of the present state of
Maine had been a perpetual source of disagreement with
England.1 It is unnecessary to follow the complicated problem
in detail until it reached an acute stage in the summer of 1838,
at which time events occurred that threatened to plunge the
United States into war with Great Britain.

Although a certain portion of northern Maine had been
acknowledged by both parties to be of uncertain title, the valley
of the Aroostook had long been considered as indubitably
within the limits of the state. In June 1838, however, a New
Brunswick official, known as the “warden of the disputed
territory,” complained to the surveyor-general of Maine, who
was then engaged in carrying out his duties in the Aroostook
Valley, that he was violating an agreement between the two
governments, and called upon him to desist. On the other

1 H. S. Burrage, Maine in the Northeastern Boundary Controversy , (Portland, 1919),
chaps, i-xii.

378 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

hand, some Englishmen were trespassing on Maine territory
and carrying off lumber to the value of a hundred thousand
dollars.1 On January 2, 1839, Governor Kent, on his retire¬
ment from office, sent a long message to the Maine legislature,
reviewing the entire question of the boundary controversy, and
the new Governor, John Fairfield, in his first message stated
that the settlement* of the matter could be delayed no longer,
and that if Maine had to resort to arms alone, the Federal
government could not fail to sustain her.2 In the same month,
as a result of another message from the Governor, the legisla¬
ture ordered a force of men, under command of the land agent,
to proceed to the Aroostook and Fish Rivers and to break up
the work of the trespassers, appropriating ten thousand dollars
for the purpose.3 The company of about two hundred pro¬
ceeded to carry out their orders, and had succeeded in capturing
about twenty English when they were themselves surprised
and the land agent and two citizens of Bangor were taken
prisoners by the “enemy” and carried to jail in Fredericton.
A message from the Governor of Maine to the legislature and
a proclamation by the injudicious Lieutenant-Governor of New
Brunswick followed quickly on these events. The Maine
legislature at once voted to send a military force to the border,
and appropriated eight hundred thousand dollars for the ex¬
pense of the expedition.4

Feeling throughout the state rose to a high pitch, and the
papers of both that and the neighboring states are filled from
then on with dispatches about the “Boundary War.” On
February 16 the Governor called out a thousand men, and three
days later the Adjutant-General issued orders to draft ten
thousand more, although the number actually engaged in the
subsequent movements did not exceed about thirty-three
hundred.5 Such a situation called for immediate action by the
Federal authorities, and if for many decades they had allowed

1 H. S. Burrage, Maine in the Northeastern Boundary Controversy, (Portland, 1919),
p. 258.

2 Both messages are printed in the Kennebec Journal , Jan. 8, 1839.

3 Burrage, op. cit., pp. 258 jj.

4 Ibid., pp. 260 JJ.; Kennebec Journal, Feb. 19, 1839.

5 Burrage, op. cit., pp. 263, 274.

STRIFE

379

the controversy to drag without taking the steps which they
should have taken to end it, they now acted with promptness.
General Winfield Scott was dispatched from Washington, to
serve as peacemaker if possible, and as a result of his efforts
the Aroostook country was left in sole possession of Maine, the
British, in turn, retaining exclusive control of the Madawaska
section, pending negotiations between Great Britain and the
United States. The political situation in Maine was a com¬
plicated one, and both Democrats and Whigs seemed to be
afraid lest the other should wrest some advantage out of the
boundary struggle. Scott appears to have acquitted himself
well as a political manoeuverer and he also had the advantage
of being a friend of the Lieutenant-Governor in New Brunswick.
As a result of his successful negotiations, both the American
and the British agreed to withdraw their troops, and this was
accordingly done, although not without much protest on the
part of many in Maine.1

Danger of immediate war was thus averted, but the matter
continued to drag, and it was only three years later — in 1842
— that a treaty negotiated by Daniel Webster and Lord Ash¬
burton was finally entered into, and the question disposed of
in a way that met the wishes of Maine fairly.2 Although the
chief points were then settled, it may be noted that an abso¬
lutely final adjustment was not reached until 1910, over a
century and a quarter from the time the dispute first started.

Another so-called “war” broke out in New England in the
same period, which, while not threatening international com¬
plications, had far more significance as indicating the trend of
thought of the times. In the preceding chapter we spoke of the
chief characteristic of these years as being an insistence upon
the rights of man as man, and not simply as a member of a
special class in society. In politics this had taken the form
of an extension of the franchise in almost every state of the
Union. The conception of what constituted “the people”
had steadily broadened to meet the growing demands of democ¬
racy. In Rhode Island alone had the wishes of the people —

1 Independent Chronicle , March 30, 1839; Kennebec Journal ’ April 9, 1839.

2 Burrage, op. cit., pp. 328 ff.

38o NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

understood as the free adult male population — been thwarted
by the obstructionist tactics of an unusually arbitrary land¬
owning class. Efforts had repeatedly been made — from 1797
to 1834 — to force an extension of the suffrage, only to be met
by the obstinate and even contemptuous resistance of those
in control of the government.1 We have already noted the
manner in which the last of these demands, made under the
leadership of Thomas Dorr, had been disdainfully thrown aside
by the legislature, which refused to give any consideration to
the merits of the question.2

The trend of the times, however, was too strongly toward
democracy to make such opposition wise, and conditions in
Rhode Island had so altered as to make the old system of suf¬
frage and representation a dangerous anachronism. That the
ownership of land does not confer brains or ability to govern
was amply shown by the stupid resistance offered to the will
of the people by the small farmers who constituted, in the main,
the governing class. By 1841 Rhode Island was almost the
only state that had not adopted an almost unrestricted man¬
hood suffrage, and the stubbornness of the landowners in that
state was to result in a mild civil war, averted from more dis¬
astrous consequences by last-minute concessions.

The state also occupied the anomalous position in the Union
of being the only one which had not adopted a written constitu¬
tion, and of being still governed by the old Royal Charter.
This charter, liberal as its terms had been for the colonial system
of the seventeenth century, had in fact created, not a republican
form of government such as it was contemplated should be
enjoyed by the several states under the Federal Constitution,
but, on the contrary, a very close corporation. The original
grantees had had the sole right to admit any others to a voice
in the management of its affairs, and they had decreed that a
landed estate of moderate size should be one of the essential
qualifications for such admission, save in the case of the eldest

1 Demands had been made in 1797, 1811, 1820, 1824, 1829, 1832, and 1834. Burke's
Report , U. S. House of Repres. Doct. No. 54.6, 28th Cong 1st Sess.y p. 14; Might and
Right , by a Rhode Islander , (Providence, 1844), pp. 63/.

2 Vide supray chap. xiv.

STRIFE

381

son of such a proprietor. In the simplicity of the early agri¬
cultural days this probably did not work any severe hardship,
as almost any man of even the most modest means could
secure a voice in what was, nevertheless, a close, self-perpetu¬
ating body of rulers. By the early nineteenth century the
situation had altered with great rapidity.

The growth of manufacturing had created a large unen¬
franchised class which had become wholly divorced from the
soil, and had developed large centres of population, which had
brought about great inequality in representation. Further¬
more, the new forms of investment available left large capital¬
ists who did not happen also to be landowners no voice what¬
ever in the affairs of government.1 In 1840, of the total adult
male citizens, numbering 22,674, exclusive of insane, aliens,
paupers, and convicts, only 9590 were entitled to vote, over
three fifths of the males who would have been so entitled in
almost any other state being excluded. In Providence alone
there were 421 persons who had no votes, but who were never¬
theless taxed on property amounting to between one and two
million dollars.2

Moreover, owing to the unchanging apportionment for
representation, it had come about that a majority of the legis¬
lature was elected by nineteen towns, having only about 3500
voters, so that the state, with a total population of 108,000,
was in the complete control of about 1800 persons. The ques¬
tion of freehold, however, was not merely one of the suffrage.
No citizen who did not own real estate could bring a suit in any
court of law for the recovery of debt or to obtain redress for
personal injury, unless a freeholder endorsed his writ. The most
upright citizen, who might have a million dollars in securities
but no land, was thus debarred from claiming his rights unless the
owner of a few acres somewhere would allow his name to be used
in the case. As the state had no constitution, and as the charter
provided no means by which the absolute will of the small body
of freemen could be balked, the situation was one which was
irritating in the extreme to the disfranchised elements.

1 “The Recent Contest in Rhode Island,” North American Review , April, 1844, p. 20.

2 Burke's Report , pp. 1 1 /.

382

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

Thomas W. Dorr, who was to lead the revolt which almost
brought on civil war, was no mere agitator. He was the son of
a wealthy manufacturer and had been educated at Phillips
Exeter Academy and Harvard College. He had been actively
interested in the question of the extension of the suffrage since
his first attempt to secure reform in 1834. I^40 the Rhode

Island Suffrage Association was formed, and in the same year
the suffrage journal, The New Age, began publication. In the
next January the suffragists asked the legislature to call a con¬
vention to draw up a constitution for the state, but that body,
as before, refused to consider the issue seriously. Thereupon
a popular meeting, at which over three thousand citizens were
present, was held at Providence. In the procession which
marched to the State House, banners were carried with such
devices as “Worth makes the Man, but Sand and Gravel the
Voter/’ and “Virtue, Patriotism and Intelligence versus $134
worth of Dirt.” 1

A meeting was also held at Newport in May, and a second at
Providence in July, at which latter it was voted to hold a con¬
stitutional convention and to carry into effect by all necessary
means such a constitution as might be adopted. The election
of delegates to the convention was held in August, all male
citizens over twenty-one years of age who had resided in the
state for one year being declared eligible to vote. This con¬
vention of the suffragists, or People’s Party as they were called,
finished its work in November and offered a constitution
remedying all the evils complained of. When it was submitted
to the people, the vote disclosed that 13,955 ballots had been
cast in favor of adopting it and only 46 against. Of those in
favor, 4925 were qualified freemen, so that the constitution
was favored not only by a majority of the male inhabitants
over twenty-one but even by a majority of the legal voters of
the state.2

All these proceedings, however, had no legal foundation.
They had in no way been sanctioned by the existing govern¬
ment. That the government did not represent the will of a

1 1. B. Richman, Rhode Island , (Boston, 1905), p. 292.

2 Burke's Report , p. 18.

1T“THE GREAT POLITICAL CAR AND LAST LOAD OF PATRIOTS

Library of Congress

384 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

majority even of its own electorate was clear from the vote
on the “People’s Constitution”; nevertheless, it persistently
refused to comply with that will. Moreover, there was no
provision in the charter for the calling of any legal convention
to alter the mode of government. The constitutional question
involved, therefore, was by no means a simple one. If an exist¬
ing government, as long in operation as that of Rhode Island,
refused to meet the will of the people, — understood either in
its broadest sense or even merely as a majority of the freemen,
— what course was open except revolution, peaceful or bloody ?
The defenders of the People’s Party could bring a long array
of eminent opinions to their support to prove that the people
had at all times the right to alter their form of government with
or without the consent of those temporarily in power.1 It is
difficult if not impossible to condemn the action taken by Dorr
and his followers on any ground up to this point. Dorr him¬
self was elected governor in an election held under the new
Constitution.

Meanwhile, the legislature had at last been forced into action,
and had itself called for a constitutional convention. That
body, after some months, proposed to the people a constitution
which embodied most — though not all — of the reforms in
the People’s Constitution. When submitted to practically
the same body of voters as had passed on the other, it was de¬
feated by the narrow margin of 676 votes in a total of 16,702.
Unfortunately, the suffragists, owing to the bitterness of feeling
which had been engendered by the long process of bullying
and obstruction employed by the legislature, voted to a great
extent against its constitution. Had they been willing to
accept the genuine victory which they had won by forcing the
landholders to submit a new instrument of government em¬
bodying practically all that had been contended for, Dorr and
his party would have scored a great success. By continuing
the fight they broke themselves and almost their cause against
the rock of technical legality.

The Landholders’ Constitution having been defeated, there
remained the existing government under the old charter and

1 Burke's Report , pp. 25 jf.

SAMUEL WARD KING,

GOVERNOR, CA'TVN-GEN£RAL, AND COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF OJ THE ST APE OF

RHODE-1SLAND AND PROVIDENCE PLANTATIONS.

A PROCLAMATION.

WHEREAS on the eighth day of June instant, I issued a Proclama¬
tion, offering a reward of one thousand dollars for the delivery of the fu-
giti/e Traitor, THOMAS WILSON DORR, to the proper civil au¬
thority: and whereas the said Thomas Wilson Dorr having returned to
this State and assumed the command of a numerous body of armed men,
in open rebellion against the Government thereof, has again fled the sum¬
mary justice which awaited him; I do therefore, by virtue of authority in
me vested, and by advice of the Council, hereby offer an additional reward
of four thousand dollars for the apprehension and delivery of the said
Thomas Wilson Dorr to the Sheriff of the County of Newport or Prov¬
idence, within three months from the date hereof. * "

GIVEN und^r my hand and the real of sait. State, at the City of
Providence, tliS twenty-ninth day of June, in (he ye lr of our Lord
one thousand eight hundred and forty-two, and of the Indepen¬
dence of the United States of America the sixty-sixth.

SAMUEL WARD KING.

BY III3 EXCELLENCY’S COMMAND;

HENRY BO W E N*\ Secretary of State.

Broadside of the Dorr War
Library of Congress

386 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

the new government headed by Dorr under the People’s Con¬
stitution. In the course of the next few months both sides
appealed to Washington. Dorr himself made a journey thither
in a vain attempt to enlist Federal support, which, however, the
President threw on the side of the Charter government. On
his way back Dorr was feted by Tammany in New York, and
he believed he would receive military aid from that city. No
genuine support for an armed revolution, however, appeared
from any quarter, and although Dorr returned to Rhode Island
and an abortive attempt was made under his leadership to
seize the arsenal in Providence on May 17, it utterly failed.
The other members of the People’s Party government promptly
resigned, and Dorr fled from the state.

The Charter government then, in turn, lost its head; and
after the proclamation of martial law the legislature proceeded
to pass the stringent Act known as the “Algerine Law,” directed
against all who had taken any active part, however humble,
in the course pursued by the People’s Party. Five thousand
dollars was offered for the capture of Dorr, and many persons
of minimum importance, whose role in the “revolution” had
been trifling, were cast into prison, some of them under indict¬
ment for treason being threatened with the death penalty.1
Dorr voluntarily returned to Providence, was seized by the
authorities and illegally carried to Newport, where he was
tried by a packed jury before a hostile judge and sentenced to
life imprisonment at hard labor in solitary confinement.

Meanwhile, the legislature, realizing that with the new
government crushed and with popular sentiment such as it
was against the old, something had to be done, had again called
a convention to draft a constitution. In due course this was
submitted to the people, but the extent of disaffection is shown
by the fact that only 7024 votes were cast in all on the question,
as compared with 16,702 in the preceding year. Of these,
however, 6973 were in favor of adoption, and the Constitution
was declared in force, though less than a majority of the voters
entitled to vote under it had approved it. The franchise was
conferred upon all male citizens, without distinction of color,

1 Burke's Report , pp. 65 ff.; Might and Right , p. 178.

STRIFE 387

who paid taxes of at least one dollar and who possessed certain
other minor qualifications.1

The suffrage party thus won in the end and, in spite of the
blunder of its leader at a critical moment, its course calls for
far more commendation than that of the Charter party of
constituted authority and conservative landowners, who
changed from a policy of stupid obstruction merely to one
of stupid cruelty, granting the demands of a majority of the
citizens only after years of delay and when it was obvious that
there was nothing else to do. Their “Algerine Law” and their
treatment of Dorr aroused a storm of protest in the neighboring
states among the more democratic elements and, of course,
in the Democratic Party. The legislatures of Maine and New
Hampshire passed resolutions strongly condemning the govern¬
ment of Rhode Island, but that of Connecticut, in turn, passed
one condemning such resolutions as “impertinent and un¬
justifiable interference with the administration of justice.” 2
Dorr was liberated in 1845 and restored to his civil rights six
years later.

In the contest over the Constitution, the Landholders had
sought to confuse the issue, as they had done ten years earlier,
by stirring up race prejudice. “Up to May last,” said a con¬
temporary writer in 1842, “the suffrage party were hooted at
for wishing to admit ‘the low Irish and the niggers' to the
polls.” 3 In neither the People’s nor the Landholders ’ proposed
constitutions were the Negroes readmitted to the franchise;
but this was done in the constitution finally accepted, it be¬
ing said that the Landholders had been forced to admit their
domestics to vote, in order to carry their measure with even the
modicum of success which it achieved.4

In the 1840’s the Irish immigration assumed enormous
proportions, more particularly after the Irish famine in 1846.
Whereas in the years 1820-30 only about fifty thousand came

1 Report of the Committee on the Action of the General Assembly on the Subject of the
Constitution , 1842 , (Providence, 1859).

2 Maine Legis. Doct. N0.J2, 1843, No. 21 , 1845; Journal of House of Representa¬
tives, Connecticut , 1845, p. 238.

3 Wm. Goodell, The Rights and Wrongs of Rhode Island , (Whitesboro, 1842), p. 6.

4 Ibid., p. 6.

388 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

to America, in the decade 1840-50 over seven hundred and
eighty thousand arrived.1 Their poverty and clannishness,
their religion, and to some extent their lawlessness all created a
strong prejudice against them.2 Even in 1838, a Congressional
Committee, reporting favorably on a report from “The Native
American Association of the United States,” claimed that the
number of foreign immigrants was increasing so rapidly as to
“jeopardize the peace and tranquillity of our citizens, if not
the permanency of the civil, religious, and political institutions”
of the country.3 It is impossible to estimate accurately the
number who found their way into New England, but by 1845
the question had become a serious one politically.4 For the
most part the Irish continued, as always, to remain in the sea¬
board cities and did not spread out into the country. In
Boston, in 1848, of the 10,162 children in the primary schools,
5154, or over one half, were of foreign parentage.5 In the
preceding year, out of 2434 inmates of the Boston Almshouse,
nearly 2000 were foreigners or children of foreign parents.6
On the other hand, although the first Irish had come to Lowell
in 1822, and a Catholic church had been built there eight years
later, in 1842 the Merrimack Mills reported that of fifteen
hundred hands only fifty were foreigners.7

Ignorant and extremely poor, the immigrants were put to
work at the coarsest tasks only, and at wages far below Ameri¬
can standards. Contractors set them to manual labor at the
rate of fifty cents for fifteen hours’ work.8 A report to the
Massachusetts Senate stated that foreigners could live on one
third of what it cost a native citizen and be much better off

1 Tables Showing Arrivals of Alien Passengers , U. S. Bureau of Statistics, 1889, p. 32.

2 L. D. Scisco, Political Nativism in New York State , (Columbia Univ. Studies, 1901),

p. 21.

3 Report of a Select Committee ... on Foreign Paupers, House of Rep. Doct.
No. 1040 , 25th Cong., 2d Sess., 1838, pp. 1, 63 jf.

4 Mass. Senate Doct. No. 109 , 1847 ; E. E. Hale, Letters on Irish Emigration , (Boston,
1852), p. 27.

5 Life and Works of Horace Mann , (Boston, 1891), vol. IV, p. 331.

6 T. W. Page, “Some Economic Aspects of Immigration,” Journal of Political
Economy , vol. XX, p. 1913.

7 F. W. Coburn, History of Lowell, (New York, 1920), p. 17 1 ; Mass. House of Repres.
Doct. No. 50, p. 14.

8 Darling, Political Changes in Massachusetts, p. 309.

STRIFE

38 9

than they had been in their native lands, adding that this un¬
fair competition prevented the educated native from occupying
the position he had had heretofore.1 Complaints might have
been better directed against the contractors who were exploit¬
ing the immigrant at fifty cents a day than against the poor
devils who received it ; but petitions were presented asking that
American labor be protected against such competition, on the
same principle as capital was protected by the tariff.2

It is probable, however, that much of the agitation, though
cloaked as economic, was in reality political. The Irish from
the beginning had naturally gravitated toward the Democratic
Party and had become an important, though not a dominant,
factor in elections by 1843.3 The Whigs by their political and
social attitudes had completely alienated the Irish when these
had first begun to arrive, and, when their numbers increased
so rapidly as to make them important as a voting element,
the Whigs cast about violently to retrieve their initial error
by the method of stopping the inflow. They expressed their
“deep indignation towards the priest-ridden Irishmen who
have been led like cattle to the polls,” as one writer stated it
in 1845.4 The hue and cry about the danger to American in¬
stitutions and American labor very likely had its origin in
nothing less human than a desire to win on election day. The
short-lived “Native American Party” was formed, and Con¬
gress was flooded with petitions for a drastic revision of the
naturalization laws. With the exception of a few localities,
however, the American working classes do not seem to have
been so deeply troubled as the Whig politicians until toward
1850. They had other things to think about.

The country had been slow in recovering from the panic
of 1 837, but by 1 843 “ big business ” was once more in the saddle
and making enormous profits. The Democratic Party, as
representing the laboring and rural population, was, as always,
violent in its attacks on the corporations of the day. An
editorial, a sample of many, in the Hartford Times , has a very
modern ring. “We had supposed,” it said, “that it was one

1 Mass. Senate Doct. No. /op, p. 4.

2 Ibid., p. 5.

8 Darling, op. cit., p. 409.

4 Hartford Times , Oct. 4, 1845.

390

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

of the great duties of a Legislature, whenever it deemed it
proper to charter a railroad, to guard the public rights to every
possible extent. But the charter of the N. Y. & Boston RR.
Co. violates some of the dearest and most valuable rights of
the people ; it protects the corporation but not the individual.
In its whole history it is one of the most discreditable pieces of
law making we know of ; and if our Legislatures are thus laying
down sovereign power and public right at the feet of a gigantic
corporation, we at least are determined to take a stand against
a system of legislative oppression, which will subject the people
to the worst of all despotisms, the narrow minded and heartless
domination of stockjobbers and brokers.” 1

There was, indeed, not a little basis for the popular discontent
with the corporations and the general attitude of capital.
Labor had suffered very severely in the panic of 1837 and the
years immediately following. When the recovery set in, about
1842 to 1843, it was as natural as it was just that labor should
consider itself entitled to some share in the new prosperity.
Instead, it found itself losing ground throughout the new dec¬
ade, whereas capital reaped the entire benefit. In 1834
was noted in the Boston Post that the textile mills were making
large profits and that prices of their stocks were advancing
rapidly, that of the Nashua Mills, for example, selling actively
at over $480 a share. It also noted that the mills were in a
favorable position to make large profits, as wages had been
reduced forty per cent since 1840.2 By 1845 the Nashua and
Jackson corporations were paying twenty-four per cent divi¬
dends, and most of the mills were distributing large profits, in
many cases on watered stock.3

A report to the Federal Government in the same year esti¬
mated that the manufacturers in Connecticut were earning
forty per cent net per annum. The Massachusetts Mills in
1846 declared dividends of twenty per cent, although a labor
paper claimed that only one half of the $1,200,000 capital had
been actually invested, and that therefore the mill was paying
forty per cent. In the same year another paper called atten-

1 Issue of July 4, 1846. Cf. Aug. 8 and Oct. 10. 2 Issue of Dec. 25, 1843.

3 Ware, Industrial Worker , pp. 5 /.

STRIFE

39i

tion to similar large earnings in other mills, whereas one of the
largest in Lowell had just reduced wages twenty-five per cent.1
In 1848 there were general wage-reductions, although mills
had been making twenty-five to forty per cent profits for the
past five or six years, and the wages of the operatives had not
been raised at all since the cuts after the panic.2

Moreover, even when the actual money wages had not been
reduced, they had been maintained by the workers only at the
expense of greatly increased labor. In the 1830’s the girl
operatives in the cotton mills had tended two looms making
from 216 to 324 picks per minute. By 1849 they were obliged
to tend four looms making 480 picks a minute, involving much
closer attention and greater effort and strain. Whereas wages
remained practically stationary, the piece-cost was enormously
reduced, the increased work being done by labor and the profit
going to capital.3

There were various strikes during the decade against reduc¬
tion in wages and the speeding-up process, but these almost
invariably failed. A report to the Massachusetts legislature
stated that there could be no legislation as to the hours of labor
without affecting the question of wages. In that common¬
wealth, the report continued, “labor is on an equality with
capital, and indeed controls it, and so it will ever be while free
education and free constitutions exist.” “Labor is intelligent
enough to strike its own bargain.” Admitting that the hours
were too long, the legislators denied that the remedy lay with
them, and asserted that it would have to be looked for “in the
progressive improvement in art and science, in a higher appre¬
ciation of man’s destiny, in a less love for money, and a more
ardent love for social happiness and intellectual superiority.” 4
As, so far, the only result of the improvement in art and science
had been to make the operative work approximately twice as
fast for the same wages, it was not encouraging to tell him, in
the name of the state, that his plight could be remedied only by
a less love for money.

There had been a considerable reduction in the hours of

1 Ibid.y p. 8. 2 Ibid., p. 1 15. 3 Ibid., p. 122.

4 Mass. House of Re pres. Doct. No. 50, p. 16.

392

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

labor everywhere in the country except in New England before
1840, and this was, perhaps, the greatest abuse in the textile
industry of that section. Outside of those states, the ten-hour
day had been achieved by almost all mechanics and other
workers in the i830,s, whereas the New England mill-hands
were still forced to work from twelve to fourteen hours of
speeded-up labor. From 1840 to 1850 the movement for the
shortening of hours was best carried on in Massachusetts, but
continually broke against the influence of the capitalists in the
legislature. The demand was mainly fostered by the workers
themselves, a rather remarkable woman, Sarah Bagley, who
organized the Lowell Female Reform Association in 1845,
leading the fight for the women.

The desire for profits was, as in the cases of the earlier strikes
we have described, cloaked under a Pharisaical care for morals.
“The morals of the operatives,” contended an opponent of
shorter hours, “will necessarily suffer if longer absent from the
wholesome discipline of factory life, and leaving them thus to
their will and liberty, without a warrant that this spare time will
be well employed. No limits can be ascribed to the abuse of
these privileges conferred, or time misspent, should the legis¬
lature see fit to accede.” 1 Considering that at this time the
operatives came mainly from the best farming homes in New
England, and that many of the girls alternated mill work with
teaching, this care for their morals was a little far-fetched on
the part of capitalists who were engaged in doubling the work
and strain of their self-appointed wards without increasing
their pay. In spite of all the efforts of the workers and
floods of petitions from them to the Massachusetts legislature
in the period of this chapter, nothing was done by legislation
to shorten their hours until far beyond the limits of this vol¬
ume, in 1874.

In 1847 a ten-hour law was passed in New Hampshire, but
apparently with little intention of making it effective. The
mill-owners, in anticipation of the passage of the law, had been
busy getting signatures of their employees to contracts by which
they bound themselves to work as many hours as the employers

1 Quoted by Ware, op. cit p. 127.

STRIFE

393

should think proper; and although two thousand employees
of the Nashua Mills held a meeting of protest, the power of
capital was too strong for them to resist. Any employee who
refused to sign was blacklisted and his name was sent not only
to other mills in New Hampshire but to the great centre of
Lowell and elsewhere. The employers banded together, and
when an employee who had refused to work more than the legal
number of hours went elsewhere to seek employment, he found
that all doors were closed to him.1

This method of blacklisting was the favorite one used by the
employers in their system of “moral police” which governed
the lives of their employees. Much was made of the care for
the moral welfare of the girls, but while good may occasionally
have been done by getting obviously unfit persons out of the
way and so saving the younger girls from contamination, the
system was abused outrageously. Not only were girls dis¬
charged “on suspicion of criminal conduct, association with
suspected persons, and general and light behavior and conver¬
sation,” as one defender of the system stated, but it was made
use of to keep down any agitation by the workers for improved
conditions.2 By the extensive combination of capitalists in
more than one state, and the use of the blacklist, the position
of a discharged employee was practically hopeless, and even
merely subscribing to a labor paper is said to have been suffi¬
cient cause for discharge.

It is not easy to arrive at a fair estimate of the housing and
other living conditions of the city factory-worker and the ex¬
tremely poor at this time. On the one hand, we read in a re¬
port made to the American Medical Association on conditions
in Boston and Lowell, by Dr. Josiah Curtis in 1849, that “the
dwellings of the poor are mostly filthy, often from neglect on
the part of the occupants, as often from neglect on the part of
the landlords, who get large rents, and do not provide suitable
drains, privies, yards, etc. The number of families in a house
varies with the number of rooms. I have found from six to
forty or more in one house of two stories, eleven and more in
one room constantly, and eight in one bed (women and men).”

1 Ibid., p. 146. 2 Ibid., p. 109.

394

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

This was in a house owned by a Boston physician.1 Similar
conditions were found by Dr. Henry Clark, who made a report
to the city of Boston. Among other places described were a
cellar which served as a home for thirty-nine persons ; another
in which the tide flowed in, so that he had to reach his patient’s
bed across a plank while a dead child was floating about the
room in its coffin ; and conditions in other sections of the city,
such as Half-Moon Place, he characterized as indescribably
loathsome.2

In 1847 the Lowell Courier had an article advocating the ap¬
pointment of a city health officer, and stating that “ the faithful
report of such an officer would astonish the public, for very few
are aware of hundreds of places now inhabited by a horde in a
horrid condition.” In one house in a central location the writer
had found a store and twenty-five families numbering one
hundred and twenty persons. In one room he found a man,
his wife, eight children, four of them over fifteen, and four
boarders, all living together. Similar conditions were reported
by other observers.3

On the other hand, if we take the pictures painted of the
boarding-houses run by some of the mills for their girl opera¬
tives, we get an entirely different view. Before the coming of
the foreigners, and while the operatives were mainly daughters
of farmers who merely worked in the mills for a few years to
broaden their experience or get extra money for one purpose
or another, conditions were entirely unlike those which we
associate with a factory population of the present day. There
are almost idyllic pictures left us of the mill girls and their
life, as painted by some of themselves and other observers of the
time.4 The conditions in Lowell were much better than else¬
where, the system of boarding-houses there introduced by
Francis Cabot Lowell and his brother-in-law Patrick T. Jackson

1 J. Curtis, Brief Remarks on the Hygiene of Massachusetts . . . Being a Report to the
American Medical Association , (Philadelphia, 1849), P*

2 City of Boston, Doct. No. 66 , quoted by Ware, op. cit., p. 13.

3 Curtis, op. cit., pp. 36 ff.

4 E.g., Lucy Larcom, A New England Girlhood, (Boston, 1892), pp. 146 ff. ; “Abby’s
Year in Lowell,” The Lowell Offering, vol. I, pp. 1 ff.; Elisha Bartlett, A Vindication of
the Character and Condition of the Females Employed in the Lowell Mills, (Lowell, 1841),
passim; Edith Abbott, Women in Industry, (New York, 1909), pp. 109 ff.

STRIFE

395

accounting in part for the better quality of the operatives.1
There was at that time almost no opening except the poorly
paid work of a school-teacher for the woman who wished to
earn her own living, and girls poured into Lowell from all the
New England states.

The Lowell mills had originally been established by men who
were sincerely desirous of maintaining a standard of morals and
right living among their employees; but from about 1840
onward, as the stocks of the corporations became more widely
distributed, the attitude changed from an individual paternal¬
ism to mere corporate greed for profits. Moreover, although
the foreign element had not yet entered the factories to any
great extent, the fact that many girls became enamored of the
town life with its freedom or that they failed to save their
money and for one reason or another were unable to return to
their homes, tended to form a permanent factory population
and labor supply. This gave the factory-owners an advan¬
tage in dealing with strikes and increased their power over the
hands.

As the prosperity of the mills increased, they became more
crowded with workers, and working conditions became worse.
As stated in Curtis's medical report, the air in the rooms where
the girls worked, “which ought to undergo an entire change
hourly, remains day after day, and even month after month,
with only the precarious change which open doors occasionally
give ! There being no ventilation at night, the imprisoned
condition of many of the rooms in the morning is stifling and
almost intolerable to unaccustomed lungs. After the day's
work is ended, two hours’ release is enjoyed, a part of which is
frequently spent in a crowded lecture-room, and then they
retire to dormitories scarcely better ventilated than the mills.
From four to six and sometimes eight are confined during the
night in a single room of moderate dimensions.” He estimated
that ten cubic feet of air per minute was required for each op¬
erative, and that if this were so the ordinary mill-room should
have had 450,000 feet a day whereas they got by measurement

1H. H. Robinson, Loom and Spindle , (New York, 1 896), p. 7; Rev. H. A. Niles,
Lowell As It IVas and Isy (Lowell, 1845), pp. 67 /.

396 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

only 60J000.1 Yet the Lowell mills were generally acknowl¬
edged to be the best in New England.

Outside of that city and such mills as had adopted the
“ Waltham system” of paternalism and moral police, the
method in vogue for dealing with operatives was the laissez
faire one of England. The hands were considered as part of the
mill machinery and not as human beings. The manager of
the largest mill in Fall River said in 1855 that so long as the
hands were able to work, he would get all that he could out of
them, and when they gave out and could not work any longer
he replaced them as he would worn-out parts of the machines.
A manager at Holyoke who found the hands “languorous” in
the morning conceived the brilliant idea that they might work
better on an empty stomach, and by forbidding breakfast he
succeeded in getting three thousand yards more of cloth a week
for the same wage-bill.2 What the life of the employees was
outside of working hours was considered no concern of the
owners, except that the hands were forced to trade at the
company store to realize on such part of their wages as was
paid in orders and not in cash. In a petition “of certain
residents of Fall River to the Legislature” in 1842 it was
pointed out that “the population of manufacturing places are
now, in a great measure, dependent for the means of physical,
intellectual and moral culture, upon the will of their employers,”
and that the latter were moved only by competition and desire
for gain.3

The laissez faire system also involved, to a far greater extent
than the Waltham, the use of child labor, as we have already
noted. In 1831 it was estimated that there were 3472 children
under the age of twelve at work in Rhode Island mills at wages
of $1.50 a week, that state having the unenviable reputation of
employing more young children than any other.4 The hours
of labor for these youngsters varied from ten to fourteen, but
the manager of the mills at Franklin, where the children worked

1 Curtis, Brief Remarks , p. 33.

2 Ware, op. cit.y p. 77.

3 Mass . House of Repres. Doct. No. 4, 1842.

4 James Montgomery, A Practical Detail of the Cotton Manufacture of the United
States , (Glasgow, 1840), p. 161.

STRIFE

3 97

twelve hours a day for six days a week, noted with much satis¬
faction that they were allowed to go to school on Sundays.1
In 1840 the Rhode Island legislature passed an Act that no
child under twelve should work in a factory unless it had had
three months’ schooling the preceding twelve months ; and
two years later Massachusetts passed its only legislation with
reference to working-hours when it was enacted that no child
under twelve should work for more than ten hours in a day.2
In spite of a few such laws, approaching the subject from the
standpoint of education only, practically nothing was done for
the child worker in the whole period under review.3

Owing almost wholly to the rapacity of the factory-owners
and managers, the position of the native American worker
became steadily worse throughout the decade. The workers
who had gone into the mills at the beginning, particularly at
Lowell, had been splendid material. Factory work had seemed
to open a new career for the ambitions and self-respecting
daughters of farming folk, and it has been pointed out that
they trooped into the mills in much the same spirit that the
same type of girl now goes to college.4 By 1850 this class had
been driven out in the hopeless struggle against the greed of
their employers. The enormous profits and high dividends
paid prove that this situation was not forced upon the owners
by competition or anything but the simple desire for greater
and greater profits.

In the effort to reduce wages and thus secure a larger share
of the social product for themselves the owners began to em¬
ploy foreigners because they could be got cheaper. The Fall
River petition of 1842 stated that “ in consequence of the influx
of foreign laborers, whose habits of cheap living enable them
to work at very low prices, the wages of the workmen, in many
of the departments of the manufacturing establishments, are
reduced so low, as to be wholly insufficient to enable them,

1 S. M. Kingsbury, Labor Laws and Their Enforcement , (New York, 1911), p. 7.

2 Legal Provisions Respecting the Education and Employment of Children in Factories ,
(Hartford, 1842), p. 13.

3 Cf. M. E. Loughran, The Historical Development of Child-Labor Legislation in the
United States , Catholic University of America, Dissertation, 1921, passim.

4 Abbott, Women in Industry , p. 1 1 2.

398 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

with the exercise of the utmost frugality and prudence, to
obtain for themselves and families the necessaries and con¬
veniences of life, and to provide for their comfort and support
in sickness and old age.” 1 The exodus of the American worker
began first at Fall River and in Rhode Island, but even at
Lowell the low wages and the abuses of the blacklist and moral-
police system led to a complete change in personnel of the
workers. In 1836 rosy-cheeked girls had come cheerfully and
hopefully from neighboring farming districts to have their
share of life's experiences in company with their fellows, and
to save their money to lift a mortgage or send a brother to
college or provide for their own married homes. Just a decade
later we learn that “a long, low, black wagon, termed a
‘slaver,’ makes trips to the north of the state, cruising around
in Vermont and New Hampshire, with a commander who is
paid |ia head for all [the girls] he brings to the market and more
in proportion to the distance — if they bring them from a
distance they cannot easily get back. This is done by repre¬
senting to the girls that they may tend more machinery than
is possible and that the work is so very neat and wages such
that they can dress in silks and spend half their time in read-
mg. 2

By 1850 the agitation for the ten-hour law, so long and so
bitterly resisted by New England employers, began to get into
politics, and this gave the employers an added reason for em¬
ploying only foreigners who had no votes. In Rhode Island,
if a native American voted against his employer’s expressed
views he was told that his tenement, owned by the employer,
was wanted, and the man with his family was turned into the
street with no chance of employment elsewhere at accustomed
work. In Lowell, by 1851, so blatant had become the habit
of dictating to the hands that a few days before election the
Hamilton Company posted a notice at its gates that “whoever,
employed by this corporation, votes the Ben Butler, Ten Hour
ticket on Monday next will be discharged.” 3 The year be¬
fore, the minority of the Ten Hour committee of the Massa-

1 Mass. House of Repres. Doct. No. 4> 1842.

2 Quoted by Ware, op. cit., p. 151. 3 Ibid. , pp. 101, 152.

STRIFE

399

chusetts legislature had pointed out in their report that “the
infusion of foreigners among the operatives has been rapid and is
going on at a constantly increasing rate. ... It will be found
that in a few years an entire modification and depression of the
state of society in and about manufacturing places will be
wrought by this cause.” 1

The owners had won. They controlled the lives of the
operatives, the politics of the municipalities and the legisla¬
ture of the state, and left no loophole of escape for the type of
self-respecting American youth with decent standards of living
who had so willingly offered themselves for employment in
the industries of New England. The owners, with their ten
to forty per cent profits had beaten down those who asked only
a fair wage and decent hours of labor. The discovery of gold
in California offered a way out for many of the most energetic
of the men, who went West and took permanently from New
England some of the best of her human material. In 1849
two hundred and fifty vessels sailed from Massachusetts alone,
carrying out men by thousands to try their luck in the new
El Dorado.2

In the decade from 1840 to 1850 the labor movement had
been wholly defensive. Its aggressive phase belongs to a
later period and different conditions. The former was mainly
an effort to save a certain standard of living, outlook on life,
and social status, for the man and the girl who offered them¬
selves as workers in the new industrialism that was springing
up and which no one as yet understood. Could the “rich,
the wise, and the good,” in the old Federalist phrase, have
increased as rapidly in wisdom and goodness as they did in
riches, the outcome might have been different. That was too
much to expect ; but the story of the industrial revolution
in any country shows that it requires more than intelligence
to govern and guide wisely, either in the economic or political
spheres.

1 Ibid., p. 153.

20. T. Howe, The Argonauts of ’ 49 , (Cambridge), 1923, p. 174. The author gives
the number of vessels but not of men. Allowing only forty persons to a vessel, there
would have been 10,000.

400

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

The labor movement in this period cannot be considered as a
thing apart. It was an integral portion of the whole humani¬
tarian movement of the times, which aimed to secure the widest
and best development of man as man. The experiments such
as Brook Farm, the various causes such as temperance, woman’s
rights, abolitionism, religious toleration, the franchise, land
reform, anti-Sabbatarianism — all the “isms” with which the
age was rife — were bound together by their fundamental idea.
By 1850, however, they were all engulfed in the swelling tide
of Antislavery, the rise of which will be briefly discussed in the
next chapter.

CHAPTER XVII

THE BLACK CLOUD

Attitude toward Slavery Issue — Virginia Debate — Garrison
and “ The Liberator ” — Northern Sentiment — Negro Education
— Attacks on Schools — American Colonization Society — Anti¬
slavery Societies — Position of the Churches — The Garrison
Mob — Lovejoy Murder — Latimer Case — Hoar and South
Carolina — Changed Policy of Abolitionists — Texas and the
Mexican War

In the last few chapters we have noted the extraordinary
activity of thought regarding the freest development of man
and of his individual personality. Reform was in the air, and
reforms of every sort were discussed in every place, from the
workman’s tenement to the lady’s boudoir. As has already
been said, this was a phase of thought that was world-wide, but
whereas in Europe discussion ranged over the whole of man’s
social life, in America there was an ominous exception — a door
closed on one room of humanitarianism. There was one topic
of vital importance to the race and nation which it was felt
must not be mentioned. “The patriotism of all classes of
citizens must be invoked to abstain from a discussion” of it,
warned Edward Everett, the new Governor of Massachusetts,
in his inaugural address to the legislature in 1837. His father-
in-law, Peter C. Brooks, one of the richest men in Boston, who
read the address in manuscript, wrote that he “could see noth¬
ing for a practical man to object to” in it.1

This fear to have upon one’s lips what was in all men’s anx¬
ious thoughts was one of the most curious phenomena in the

1 P. R. Frothingham, Edward Everett , (Boston, 1925), pp. 132, 134.

402

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

history of the nation, and had a profound influence on the minds
and characters of all Americans in the decades from 1830 to
1850. Before 1830 the tabooed topic could be freely discussed.
After 1850, when it had entered American politics as the lead¬
ing question of the day, it did become freely discussed. But in
the intervening two decades a craven fear seized upon the
American soul. For the most part all the men of wealth, of
learning, of leadership in society, business, and the churches,
entered into a vast unspoken conspiracy, dictated by fear, to
force the American people to abstain from mentioning what
was, in reality, the most vital question of the day.

What was this topic which even the Governor of the state of
Massachusetts warned American citizens that they must not
discuss ? It was nothing less than the question whether, in the
state of civilization which had then been reached and in view
of the doctrines of the Christian religion, it was justifiable for
one portion of the human race forcibly to submit another por¬
tion to the evils of slavery. In 1833, after open discussion in
Parliament and among the people, the Government of England
abolished slavery throughout the entire Empire; but in free
America wealth and religion banded together to adjure all men
not even to mention the existence of the problem.

It is not often that any phase of national thought or emotion
is so sharply delimited in time as was this disgraceful one in the
United States. Abolition of slavery had from time to time
been openly considered, even in the South, but the enormous
development of the growth of cotton had apparently riveted
the chain on the slave more firmly than ever. The year 1831
marks, both North and South, the beginning of a new era with
regard to the question. In that year and the first month of
the following one a long debate was held in the legislature of
Virginia on schemes to colonize free blacks and gradually eman¬
cipate the slaves. In the course of it, Virginians referred to
slavery as “the heaviest calamity which has ever befallen any
portion of the human race,” and as “a curse upon him who
inflicts as upon him who suffers it.” 1 The proposed bill was
defeated by the narrow margin of one vote in the State Senate,

1 Quoted by Charming, Hist, of U. S., vol. V, p. 143.

THE BLACK CLOUD

403

and from that fatal day onward there was never again free
discussion of the topic anywhere in the South.

In that same year, in Boston, William Lloyd Garrison
founded The Liberator , a journal devoted to immediate emanci¬
pation. Up to then there had been, perhaps, a more open mind
as to the possibility of gradual emancipation in at least some of
the Southern states than there had been in the North, but Garri¬
son shattered forever the smug complacency of Northerners who
were wholly satisfied with “things as they are.” What Gar¬
rison intended and what his effect was likely to be can be best
shown in his own words in the first issue of the new paper.
“ During my recent tour,” he said, “for the purpose of exciting
the minds of the people by a series of discourses on the subject
of slavery, every place that I visited gave fresh evidence of the
fact that a greater revolution in public sentiment was to be
effected in the free states — and particularly in New England —
than at the South. ... I found contempt more bitter, oppo¬
sition more active, detraction more relentless, prejudice more
stubborn, and apathy more frozen, than among the slave own¬
ers themselves. ... I determined at every hazard, to lift up
the standard of emancipation in the eyes of the nation, within
the sight of Bunker Hill and in the birthplace of liberty. That
standard is now unfurled. ... I shall strenuously contend
for the immediate enfranchisement of our slave population.
. . . I am aware that many object to the severity of my lan¬
guage ; but is there not cause for severity ? I will be as harsh
as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject
I do not wish to write, or speak, or think, with moderation.
No ! No ! Tell a man whose house is on fire, to give a moderate
alarm ; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of
the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe
from the fire into which it has fallen ; but urge me not to mod¬
eration in a cause like the present. I am in earnest — I will
not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single
inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.”1

1 The Liberator , Jan. 7, 1831. For an account of the events leading to the establish¬
ment of the paper, vide W. P. and F. J. Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison , (New York,
1885), vol. I, pp. 219/.

4°4

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

And he was heard. But from that time forward, North and
South, every effort that men could be induced to put forth by
fear and anger and love of gain and every motive except truth
and justice and humanity were put forth to stifle every voice
raised to question the “sacred compromise” of the Constitu¬
tion. In the North, the highest motive and the only one deserv¬
ing any consideration was the fear lest an agitation of the
slavery problem should result in a dissolution of the Union
between the States. There were many who held that that
Union was the highest good, and that any evil should be suffered
to exist in the nation rather than imperil that. They believed,
moreover, or professed to believe, that in the future slavery
would somehow melt away of itself, although it was becoming
more strongly entrenched economically every day. But there
were also many, and probably many of these who cloaked their
less worthy motives under professed love of Union, who felt
that agitation would disrupt their particular political party or
decrease their business profits. All through the next two
decades there was a curious and increasing subserviency of
Northern sentiment and manhood to the South. Northern
cotton manufacturers were closely bound to the Southern
producers of their raw material. “Cotton thread holds the
Union together; write John C. Calhoun and Abbott Law¬
rence,” said Emerson in his Journal.

There was only too much truth in this statement. If the
rich cotton-planters of South Carolina and the other cotton
states felt that their prosperity was dependent upon slavery,
no less did the rich manufacturers and merchants of New Eng¬
land feel that their own prosperity was bound up with the South,
and that nothing must be done to disturb Southern production
and business relations. Social as well as business connections
were in many cases close between the two sections, and culti¬
vated Northern gentlemen felt it unbecoming to criticize their
charming Southern friends for any peculiar institution they
might cherish. Had not all that been settled when the Consti¬
tution was adopted ? Why make things unpleasant now ?
The same men who gave as an excuse for not reducing the hours
of labor of their own employees to ten a day, that to do so would

THE BLACK CLOUD

405

give them so much leisure as to ruin their morals, could have
no great compunction as to what Southern friends and business
correspondents might or might not do with their slaves. As
for the brutalities and atrocities talked about by the Abolition¬
ist “ cranks,” they were considered as either lies or grossly over¬
rated — as, indeed, to some extent they were. So ran the
minds of cultivated, high-bred sons of the Puritans.

Nor among the plain men of New England did the Negro find
any more sympathy than among the rich. About the only
difference between the feeling on the subject in the cottage and
the feeling in the mansion was that in the former the Negro was
heartily disliked in a personal and racially antipathetic fashion,
whereas in the latter the feeling on the subject was usually
rooted in what we may call a social-economic-political complex,
which caused any sympathy for the Abolition cause to be con¬
sidered extremely bad form. Every class in society instinc¬
tively protects itself against attacks from without and any too
insistent self-questioning or criticism from within, by adopting
certain ideas as right or wrong, good or bad form, without
troubling to analyze them. In the higher ranks of New Eng¬
land society, in the case of the Negro, this assumed the shape
of social ostracism of anyone who took his antislavery feelings
too seriously. In the humbler ranks it assumed the shape of

direct action. r '

r'v

The racial feeling against the Negro was strong in all classes.
As we have seen, the blacks were disfranchised in Rhode Island
until 1842, and in Connecticut, where the anti-Negro feeling
seems to have been strongest, until a decade after the Civil War.
They were segregated on the new railways, which provided
“Jim Crow” cars as in the South. They were not allowed in
the churches at all in some cases, and occasionally, as in the
Baptist Church at Hartford, the Negro pews were boarded up,
leaving only peepholes, so that the white Christians should not
have their religious feelings disturbed by the sight of them.1
It was probably partly as a result of the treatment which the
Negroes received that they constituted an alarmingly large
proportion of the criminal class, considering their relative
1 A. H. Grimke, William Lloyd Garrison , (New York, 1891), p. 161.

4o6 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

numbers; and this, in turn, reacted upon the feeling against
them. In Connecticut it was stated that although they formed
only one twentieth part of the population they perpetrated one
sixth of all the crimes.1 j

It was perhaps in the matter of education that the prejudice
against them came out most strongly. The School Commis¬
sioners in Connecticut, in pointing out the above figures as to
crimes, stated that there was no reluctance to include Negro
children in the school enumeration, and asked why, therefore,
facilities should not be provided for them, adding that for the
cost of prosecuting and imprisoning Negro criminals the colored
children of the whole state, between the ages of four and sixteen,
might be educated.2 Separate colored schools existed in some of
the large cities, such as Hartford and Boston, but for the most part
the Negroes were denied even the most rudimentary education.

This opposition was sometimes merely a dislike to the min¬
gling of blacks and whites in the same schools, as was shown in
the agitation in Boston in 1846.3 This had been preceded two
years previously by a clash in Salem, where the feeling had run
very high and the colored school had been discontinued alto¬
gether.4 Some years earlier the Noyes Academy at Canaan,
New Hampshire, had admitted a few colored boys, with the
result that a legal town-meeting resolved to pull the building
from its foundations ; and this was subsequently done by a mob
of about three hundred citizens with a hundred yoke of oxen.5

Unfortunately, the opposition to Negro education also took
the form of refusing to allow them to receive any at all, even in
separate institutions. In 1831 it was proposed to found a
manual-training school for them in New Haven. The mayor at
once summoned a meeting of the citizens, and with only one
dissenting voice it was resolved not only that they should resist
the establishment of such an institution by every lawful means,

1 1st Annual Report, Board of Commissioners of Common Schools, Connecticut, 1839,
P- 34-

2 Ibid., p. 34.

3 Channing, Hist, of U. S ., vol. V, p. 158.

4 Address of the Mayor of Salem, March 25, 1844, (Salem, 1844), p. 10; Salem Register,
March 7, 14, 21, July 31, Aug. 10, 1844.

5 Henry Wilson, Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, (Boston, 1875), vol. L
PP- 239/*

THE BLACK CLOUD

407

but that the education of colored people “was an unwarrant¬
able and dangerous interference with the internal concerns of
the state” and ought to be discouraged.1

The most notorious case of the sort was that of Prudence
Crandall. Miss Crandall, who had been a teacher at Plainfield,
Connecticut, opened a school of her own at Canterbury in the
autumn of 1832. A young colored girl wishing to attend, Miss
Crandall allowed her to do so, and some of the parents of the
white girls objected. Miss Crandall then decided to take
colored girls only, and a town meeting was called to protest
against having a colored school in the village. Miss Crandall
was denied any opportunity of a hearing through her counsel,
although they were prepared to state for her that if the town
would repay her for what the place she had taken had cost her,
she would then retire to a more distant part of the community
to carry on her project. Failing to secure a hearing, she
resolved to persevere where she was. Although this was
explained afterward, the leader of the opposition declared that
it was their intention to prevent the setting-up of such a school
anywhere in the state, and that the colored people were an
inferior race who could not and ought not to be allowed to rise
from their position.2

Various forms of disgraceful intimidation were used against
her, such as filling her well with refuse, and threatened physical
violence ; but she declined to be swerved from her purpose.
Her opponents then secured the passage of an Act in the legis¬
lature making it illegal for anyone to set up a school for colored
people who were not inhabitants of the state, without the con¬
sent of the selectmen of the town in which the school should be
located. Under this law Miss Crandall was arrested and placed
in jail. Eminent counsel were retained to defend her, and the
trial is noteworthy as involving the question of the citizenship
of Negroes long before the Dred Scott case.3

1 Ibid., p. 238.

2 S. J. May, Some Recollections of the Anti-Slavery Conflict , (Boston, 1869), p. 47.

3 Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of Errors of the State
of Connecticut , (New York, 1877), vol. X, pp. 339 ff.; J. C. Hurd, The Law of Freedom
and Bondage , (Boston, 1862), vol. II, p. 46; Report of the Arguments of Counsel in the
Case of Prudence Crandall , (Boston, 1834), p. 5.

4o8 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

Miss Crandall was released from jail, but her neighbors con¬
tinued to persecute her while the trial was pending. It is said
that physicians refused to attend the sick of her family, and
that she was forbidden to enter the church.1 Her house nar¬
rowly escaped being burned by incendiaries ; it was attacked
by night and partially wrecked, and she was finally forced to
leave the town for safety. In the court proceedings the first
trial resulted in a divided jury, but a new case was brought
against her, and in spite of the argument that the law was un¬
constitutional — on the ground that Negroes were citizens
and that it therefore infringed that clause of the constitution
which gave citizens of one state all the privileges of those in
another — the case was decided against the defendant. It was
then appealed to the Supreme Court of the State, but that
body dodged the real issue, although it reversed the decision of
the lower court on the ground of insufficient information.

The work of the Abolitionists of this period has frequently
been condemned, and it has even been said that they had noth¬
ing to do with the later freeing of the slaves and were merely
fanatics who created bitter feeling without securing any prac¬
tical results for their cause. It is difficult to agree with this
opinion. That they were fanatics may be readily admitted.
A man has to be a fanatic to carry through any reform against
the almost solid opposition of all classes of society. When the
gentle-souled Abolitionist, Samuel May, expostulated with
Garrison regarding the extreme violence of his language, Gar¬
rison replied, “I have need to be all on fire , for I have moun¬
tains of ice about me to melt.” It may also be admitted that
the chief and characteristic work of the Abolitionists was ac¬
complished by 1840, and that thereafter the Antislavery cause
was mainly forwarded by other means. But in the years when
they began their work neither North nor South wished even to
discuss the question of slavery. Craven with fear of what
might result to society, to their own business, to the Union, men
did not want to listen to a word about it. Garrison had said
he would be heard, and he was heard. The nation had become
a nation of ostrich-like hypocrites, well-meaning perhaps,

1 Wilson, op. cit.y vol. I, p. 244.

William Lloyd Garrison

From, a mezzotint engraving by John Sartain (1836) } after a painting

by M. C. Torrey {1835)

%

THE BLACK CLOUD

4°9

human enough in their dislike of having an established order
disturbed, but nevertheless hypocrites. Garrison and the
others forced them, against their wills, to think and talk and
act. The anger aroused was intense, but it was a sign of life
and not the death of a pusillanimous silence. Can anyone
claim that the nation, even the South, would be better off to-day
if the slavery question had not been settled ? It is pleasant to
dream that the issue might in time have adjusted itself by the
voluntary abandonment of the institution, but is there any
reason to believe it ? If it had to be determined by war, then
the sooner it could come and pass, the better; and there is
little doubt that the passions aroused in both sections, particu¬
larly the South, by the Abolitionists, hastened the coming of
the conflict by so shaping events as to preclude any other
method of settlement.

One of the noteworthy attempts to remedy the evil without
striking at the roots was the American Colonization Society,
which had been formed in 1 8 1 6 for the purpose of colonizing free
blacks in Africa and gradually emancipating the slaves.1 Many
philanthropists had joined in the movement and Garrison him¬
self was deceived for a while. On investigation, however, he
became convinced not only that the Society would never
accomplish anything, but that its very existence had a perni¬
cious influence. He at once began a violent attack upon it and
showed the absurdity of sending the Negro back to his “native
land,” pointing out that Africa was no more the native land
of those Negroes who had been born here, and possibly of gen¬
erations of American-born, than England was the native land
of the white members of the Society.2 The Negroes in Boston
held a meeting at which they themselves denounced the scheme
of “dragging us to Africa — a country to us unknown except
by geography.” 3 Garrison then published his findings and
conclusions in a pamphlet which created an enormous sensation.
Among other counts against the Society, he claimed that it was

1 E. L. Fox, The American Colonization Society , 1817-1840 , (Baltimore, 1919), pp.
46 ff. This doctoral dissertation would seem to give rather too favorable a view of the
Society.

2 The Liberator , Jan. 8, 1831.

3 Ibid. , March 12, 1831.

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

410

pledged not to oppose slavery as a system ; that it recognized
slaves as property; that it increased their value; that it
denied the possibility of raising the position of Negroes in this
country; and that it was misleading the nation.1

Allowing for motives of genuine philanthropy in many who
believed in the colonization scheme, it must be admitted that
the plan was utterly impractical as a solution of the slavery
problem ; that its main value was to the slaveholders in ridding
them of the disturbing influence of free Negroes ; and that it
did divert the mind of the country from facing the problem
squarely.2 How little such a plan could ever have accom¬
plished, aside from the injustice of deporting men who had
never known any conditions other than those of American life
to the wilds of Africa, is shown by the fact that after fifty years
of effort and expenditure, the Society had succeeded in colo¬
nizing only six thousand Negroes, or about the natural annual
increase in one slave state.3

In January 1832 the New England Antislavery Society was
formed in Boston, with the object of the abolition of slavery
and the immediate'emancipation of the slaves. Arnold Buffum,
who had long been identified with the cause of abolition, was
made president, and Garrison corresponding secretary.4 Grad¬
ually a group of distinguished men and women joined the ranks
of the Abolitionists, among them Samuel J. May, whose saint¬
liness and gentleness of character were praised by all who knew
him; Wendell Phillips, who abandoned social position and the
prospect of a lucrative legal career for the social ostracism which
was meted out to any “ friend of the niggers” ; the poet Whit¬
tier ; the merchant Francis Jackson ; C. T. Follen of Harvard ;
Edmund Quincy; Lydia Maria Child, and others. Not only
was every form of pressure which society and the Church could
bring to bear against those who threatened to disturb the estab¬
lished order exerted against these men and women, but they
were over and over again threatened with physical violence.

1 Chapman, Garrison , p. 64.

2 Cj. Wm. Jay, An Enquiry into the Character and Tendency of the Colonization and
American Anti-Slavery Societies , (New York, 1835).

3 Fox, op. cit ., p. 21 1.

4 Garrison, Garrison , vol. I, pp. 279 ff. ; Wilson, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 223 jf.

THE BLACK CLOUD

411

Throughout the whole period covered by this chapter, it
must be confessed that the churches, with few exceptions, were
in favor of slavery, or at least opposed to any agitation of the
question. There had been a steady decline in their humani¬
tarian attitude in regard to the matter since the Revolution.
The voices which should have been raised in favor of the moral
issue were either silent or raised on the wrong side. Garrison
complained that the clergy were far more dangerous opponents
to the Antislavery cause than all its other enemies combined.
“ If the church and clergy had not utterly failed to perform their
peculiar and appropriate duty of relieving the oppressed and
pleading for the friendless, the fatherless, and the widow, anti¬
slavery societies would never have existed. They were literally
called into existence by the delinquencies of the churches.” 1
The Reverend Wilbur Fisk, leader of New England Metho¬
dism, came out openly in favor of slavery. The Reverend Dr.
Wayland, a Baptist, and president of Brown University, pub¬
lished a book to prove that the question should not be agitated,
and that it would be an act of bad faith for the government to
abolish slavery even in the Federal District of Columbia. Pro¬
fessor Moses Stuart of Andover Seminary and President Lord
of Dartmouth were strong defenders of slaveholding.2 The
pressure of congregations and the spirit of the times can be
seen exemplified in the course of even such a man as William
Ellery Channing.3

In 1845 it was pointed out that in the protest against slavery
signed by some of the Unitarian clergy, the names of all the
most distinguished leaders of the church were conspicuously
absent.4 Commenting on the attitude of the churches in 1849,
Wendell Phillips asked, “Where is Hubbard Winslow ? Teach¬
ing that a minister’s rule of duty, as to what he should teach
and preach, is ‘what the brotherhood will allow and protect.’
Where is the pulpit of the ‘ Old South ’ ? Sustaining slavery as a
Bible institution. Where is Park Street ? Refusing to receive

1 Herald of Freedom, Feb. 9, 1844.

2 Martyn, Phillips , pp. 174 ff.

3 Chapman, Garrison , pp. 26 ff.

4 The Liberator , Oct. 31, 1845. Cf. May, Anti-Slavery Conflict , pp. 329 ff.

412

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

within its walls, for funeral services, the body of the only
martyr the Orthodox Congregationalists of New England have
had. . . . Where is Essex Street Church ? Teaching that
there are occasions when the Golden Rule is to be set aside.
Where is Federal Street Church ? Teaching that silence is the
duty of the North with respect to slavery, and closing its doors
to the funeral eulogy of the Abolitionist Follen. . . . And I
might ask, where are the New South and Brattle Street ? But
they are not.” 1

The Abolitionists confined their activities wholly to the
written and spoken word. The acts of violence which became
more and more frequent were all directed against them by the
proslavery parties North and South. A possible exception
might be made with regard to the “underground railroad,’'
for assisting escaped slaves to remain in hiding or pass on to
places of safety in the free states or Canada. The routes came
to form a network all over the North, probably being first
established in New England about 1830; but this was never
an organized institution, and it came into existence only by the
gradual linking up from point to point of individuals who were
willing to assist in the escapes.2

The activities of the Antislavery Societies, however, and most
of all, Garrison’s fiery denunciations in the Liberator , aroused
the country to a pitch of anger, North and South, that has
never been equaled in our history. The genteel conspiracy of
silence, the refusal to discuss a burning issue because it might
burn, changed into a mad mood that brought even gentlemen
in Boston and elsewhere down to the level of gutter ruffians.
It makes little difference what section of the country we look
at, the story is the same — that of an insane anger against those
who dared, in the press and by public speech, to attack what the
growing humanitarianism of the epoch was beginning to regard
as the iniquity of slavery. The story of the Abolition move¬
ment in New England is, of course, linked at every step with
the history of the country at large, and in one short chapter

1 Quoted by Martyn, Phillips , p. 220.

2 W. H. Siebert, The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom , (New York,
1898), pp. 22, 56.

THE BLACK CLOUD

4 13

we can do nothing but glance briefly at certain episodes. The
narrative in its entirety takes volumes, and has been told else¬
where.

By 1835 the South — and to some extent the North — was
demanding legislation of the most drastic sort to curb the
tongues and pens of the Abolitionists. In an effort to keep any
Antislavery literature out of the South, a mob at Charleston,
South Carolina, attacked the post office and robbed the mails.
Postmasters undertook, without a shadow of legal right, to stop
the mailing of any papers or pamphlets dealing with the ques¬
tion, and were upheld in this course by Amos Kendall, Post¬
master-General and a Massachusetts man.1 The South openly
threatened the North with secession if slavery were touched,
and warned the Northern states, particularly Massachusetts,
that heavy retaliation would follow on Northern business men
if they did not see to it that discussion of the slavery question
should cease. In a word, they called on the North to suppress
free speech.2 But the Northern business men needed no such
menacing, and were as angrily anxious to suppress the disturbers
of their tranquillity as were the slave-owners themselves.

On August 21, 1835, a monster mass-meeting of fifteen hun¬
dred citizens of Boston, presided over by Mayor Lyman and
such distinguished men as Harrison Gray Otis, was held in
Faneuil Hall to placate Southern feeling, oppose the Abolition¬
ists, and “vindicate the fair name” of Boston. Otis, who had
become proslavery, made a memorable address in which he
said that free speech was one thing and spreading disaffection
and poisoning “the sweet fountains of domestic safety and
comfort is a different thing.” 3 It is unquestionable that the
Negro was not considered as a man with the rights of man in
the North any more than in the South, and when Otis spoke of
the “sweet fountains of domestic safety” both he and his
auditors had nothing in mind but the homes of the four hundred
thousand slave-owners, giving no thought whatever to the
millions of slaves.

1 Wilson, Slave Power , vol. I, pp. 322 ff.

2 Garrison, Garrison , vJ. II, pp. 4 /.

3 Morison, Otis, vol. II, p. 272. Cf. pp. 276 ff.

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

4J4

That was exactly the startling difference between the Aboli¬
tionists and the rest of the nation in all sections. That there
were innumerable kindly slave-owners and happy slaves was
unquestionably true. But where the rest of the country saw
only an economic system of labor, long accepted in law and
society, and regarded the slave as something less than human
and almost animal, the Abolitionists could see only human
beings, and the effects on both whites and blacks of the abuses
of the slave system. What Garrison and the others accom¬
plished was to drive home the unwelcome truth, which no one
wanted to consider, that the Negroes were human ; that they
were men and women, not chattels ; and once this truth sank
deep it made the abuses of the system blaze up in a new and
lurid light, even though, to a far greater extent than the Aboli¬
tionists believed and preached, those abuses were limited and
not universal.

After the Faneuil Hall meeting, in accordance with the sug¬
gestion of Mayor Lyman, the Abolitionists were extremely dis¬
creet in their public activities and suspended public meetings
of their own for a time. On October 21, however, a meeting of
about thirty women was held after being advertised. At that
time the English Antislavery advocate, George Thompson,
who had centred upon himself all the animosity felt for one who
was not only an Abolitionist but a foreigner, was in the city.
As it was thought that he would attend the meeting, a mob of
several thousand persons, including a large proportion of respect¬
able elements and men who considered themselves gentlemen,
assembled for the purpose of capturing Thompson and tarring
and feathering him. Handbills had been circulated, offering
one hundred dollars to the person who should first lay hands on
him.1 Although the Boston police consisted of only six men
on day duty, and Mayor Lyman had been anticipating trouble,
he took no measures to protect the meeting.2

Thompson could not be found, but the mob broke into the
meeting and howled and stormed at the defenseless women

Theodore Lyman, 3d, Papers Relating to the Garrison Mob , (Cambridge, 1870),
p. 14. This pamphlet is a defense of Mayor Lyman.

2 Ibid., p. 53.

THE BLACK CLOUD

415

while they prayed. Garrison had been in attendance, but had
left, in order to protect the women from a scene of violence.
Lie retreated to his own office in the same building, where the
mob suspected his presence and some of them broke a panel
in the door, disclosing Garrison within. Meantime, Lyman
had arrived and urged - — or, as it was said, ordered — the
women to leave, saying that he could not protect them if they
would not do so. They passed out from the building amid the
howls and hisses of the mob, made up, as one of the women
wrote, of men of wealth and respectability. “We saw the faces
of those we had, till now, thought friends,” she wrote, “men
whom we never met before without giving the hand in friendly
salutation.” So far had passion swept away the veneer of
manhood and courtesy, even in the North, that Boston gentle¬
men could thus treat thirty defenseless women of their own
acquaintance.1 Garrison himself was saved only by being
escorted by the Mayor to jail and lodged there for the night,
and that not without imminent danger to his life. Although
not slave-owners, the upper classes in Boston had as truly
thrown in their fortunes with slavery as had the Southerners,
and, as has been said, the anger of the North was the anger of
the man who sees his property attacked.2 Garrison was forced
to leave the city and take temporary refuge in the country.

Little by little, however, the Abolition cause began to gain
recruits among the men of social and business standing. Al¬
though they may not have approved altogether of the tactics
of the Abolitionists, they became disgusted with the unjust
and physically violent methods of their adversaries. The
hearings before the so-called Lunt Committee, for example,
gained some adherents in unexpected quarters. The Southern
legislatures had been urging Massachusetts to take action
against the Abolitionists, and pliant Governor Everett, that
“reed shaken by the wind,” as John Quincy Adams called him,
appointed a committee to consider the complaints and demands
of the Southerners. In the hearings, the Abolitionists were
treated with such utter unfairness by the stupid chairman,
George Lunt, that two such men as Gamaliel Bradford and

1 Garrison, Garrison, vol. II, p. 16 n. 2 Chapman, Garrison, p. 119.

4i 6 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

George Bond, the latter one of the most prominent merchants
in Boston, were moved to protest and speak in favor of Garri¬
son and his followers.1

In Congress the aged ex-President, John Quincy Adams, con¬
tinued to present petitions regarding slavery by the score and
hundred from Northern states, in spite of the enraged opposi¬
tion of Southern members. These petitions reached their full
flood in 1836, but Adams stood for years almost alone, un¬
touched by the most virulent abuse, insisting upon the right of
petition against every effort of the South to suppress it. With
the rising tide of anger, which attained its high point about the
same year, it had indeed become a question not merely of slav¬
ery in the South but whether the maintenance of that institu¬
tion was to involve the suppression of free speech and a free
press, and abolish the guaranties of the Constitution through¬
out the whole land — free states as well as slave.

In 1837 came the murder, by a proslavery mob, of the editor
and young Presbyterian minister, Elijah P. Lovejoy, in Alton,
Illinois. The Boston Abolitionists at once asked for the use
of Faneuil Hall for a meeting to defend the rights of free speech.
It was refused ; but when Dr. Channing joined in the demand
and it was seen that public sentiment was strongly aroused,
permission was reluctantly accorded. The meeting, however,
was packed to a great extent with proslavery elements, and the
Attorney-General of the state, James T. Austin, denounced
Lovejoy instead of his murderers, and almost carried the meet¬
ing with him. He compared the leaders of the Alton mob with
the Boston patriots in the Revolution, and claimed that Love¬
joy, who was not an Abolitionist but who edited an Antislavery
paper, had died “as the fool dieth.” It was at this point that
Wendell Phillips made his first appearance as an orator in the
Antislavery ranks. Having come with no expectation of tak¬
ing part in the discussion, he was so aroused by the denial of
the right of free speech that he advanced to the platform and
made an impassioned appeal to the turbulent meeting. Ad¬
dressing the chairman in the course of it, and referring to the
remark of the Attorney-General, he said : “ When I heard the

1 Wilson, Slave Power , vol. I, pp. 330 ff.

THE BLACK CLOUD

4i7

gentleman lay down principles which place the murderers of
Alton side by side with Otis and Hancock, with Quincy and
Adams, I thought those pictured lips [pointing to the portraits
in the Hall] would have broken into voice to rebuke the recre¬
ant American — the slanderer of the dead.” 1 From that time
forward, the gifted young lawyer abandoned all his brilliant
prospects to serve the cause of Abolition.

In 1842 Boston was again thrown into confusion by the case
of George Latimer, a Negro who was seized without warrant by
request of James Grey of Norfolk, Virginia, who claimed him
as his slave. The city attorney and other officials involved
in the case all showed great alacrity in forwarding it, and much
indignation was aroused in the city by this attempt to recap¬
ture a slave who had sought refuge in a free state. A mass
meeting of four thousand persons was held in Faneuil Hall and
was addressed by Edmund Quincy, Phillips, and others. As
usual, an effort was made to break up the meeting, and the dis¬
graceful proceedings of the mob stirred general resentment.
Finally, four hundred dollars was paid for the freedom of the
Negro, and he remained in Massachusetts as a free man.2

A couple of years later, in 1844, the state was again aroused,
this time by the treatment in South Carolina of an official
agent sent there to procure a remedy of abuses. That state,
as well as some others in the South, had passed laws from time
to time forbidding the entry of free Negroes. This excluded all
colored sailors on vessels touching at their ports, and although
South Carolina had receded from her position when England
had protested with regard to citizens of foreign countries, she
refused to allow the same freedom to citizens of her sister states.
From time to time, Negro sailors on vessels belonging to Mas¬
sachusetts had been taken off their ships, fined, imprisoned,
flogged, and otherwise maltreated. In 1844, Samuel Hoar was
sent to represent Massachusetts at Charleston and to secure
what protection he could for citizens. South Carolina declined
either to desist from her treatment or to allow the dispute to be
brought before the United States Supreme Court for adjudica-

1 Martyn, Phillips , p. 96.

2 Wilson, Slave Power , vol. I, pp. 479 /.

4i 8 NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

tion, and Hoar was not only unable to accomplish anything but,
with much indignity, was expelled from the state.

This unwarranted action aroused the Massachusetts legisla¬
ture, and the Senate passed resolutions denouncing South Caro¬
lina and alleging that for a quarter of a century she had per¬
sisted in executing laws which infringed the rights of her sister
states and had refused to be judged by the Supreme Court;
that she claimed the right to seize, maltreat, and sell into slav¬
ery citizens of other states who entered her territory on peace¬
ful business ; and that she expelled citizens going there for the
sole purpose of securing legal redress of wrongs. As Congress
had declared itself powerless to intervene, — the protest con¬
tinued, — it had become evident that the citizens of the
aggrieved states were thrown back wholly on their own ability
to defend their rights by themselves. South Carolina claimed
that Negroes were not citizens of the United States and there¬
fore not entitled to protection, to which Massachusetts replied
that they were citizens of Massachusetts, and that that was
sufficient.1 Although the South Carolina case attracted most
attention, a similar one occurred when Henry Hubbard was
sent to Louisiana to secure redress for the same grievances
suffered from that state.2

Meanwhile, although Antislavery sentiment had made dis¬
tinct gains in all New England, certain dissensions had become
evident in the ranks of the movement. For one thing, the
woman question had come up at more than one convention,
both here and in England, in an acute form.3 Women were
among the most ardent as well as the most able advocates of
the cause, but so great was the prejudice against any public
activity on their part that their right to speak at meetings was
bitterly opposed. In 1837 the General Association of the
Massachusetts orthodox churches condemned the public work
of the Grimke sisters on behalf of the slaves as unchristian and
demoralizing. When, in answer to the challenge, the conven-

1 Mass. Senate Doct. No.j/ , 1845, pp. 13, 33 ; Mass. House of Repres. Rept. No. 66 ,
1845. Cf. Journal of Senate of Connecticut , 1845, p. 250, and of the House , pp. 233 ff.

2 Mass. House of Repres. Rept. No. 65, 1845. Cf. also Rept. No. 14.

3 May, Anti-Slavery Conflict , pp. 230 ff.

THE BLACK CLOUD

4*9

tion of the New England Antislavery Society voted that all
members, regardless of sex, might participate in the proceed¬
ings, eight clergymen at once resigned, the clergy, apparently,
forming the backbone of the opposition to the women. In¬
deed, the general body of the clergy had become inexplicably
reactionary at this period. In the pastoral letter of the Gen¬
eral Association just noted, not only was the right of women
to speak in public attacked, but that of men as well, unless
approved by the clergyman of the parish. “Deference and
subordination are essential to the happiness of society,” it
said, “and peculiarly so in the relation of a people to their
pastor. . . . The respect due to the pastoral office” was
violated, in their opinion, when lecturers were encouraged to
speak on topics of reform without having obtained the consent
of the settled pastor ! It seems as though we were in the
Middle Ages instead of in Massachusetts in 1837, when we hear
the voice of the churches proclaiming that “your minister is
ordained of God to be your teacher,” and that if he does not
choose to present and preach on certain topics, “it is a violation
of sacred and important rights to encourage a stranger to pre¬
sent them.” 1

Another question which began to create division among the
Antislavery advocates was that of the ballot. There was more
or less acrimonious discussion as to the advisability of entering
politics and the possible advantages of a third party. The
short-lived “Liberty Party” had been started in 1840, break¬
ing up three years later, and it was felt by many that political
action was unlikely as yet to secure results, whereas it might
easily sow discord and dissension.2 From about this same time
the leadership of Garrison began to be questioned, and in fact,
as we have said, his distinctive work had already been accom¬
plished. His disunion views had also served to alienate many.
He had early foreseen what was the truth — that the roots of
slavery were so deep and the possibility of a peaceful settlement
of the matter so slight, that the question of slavery was at
bottom the question of the LTnion. It was not that slaves were
held in the South and not in the North. Large classes in the

1 Ibid., p. 243. 2 Garrison, Garrison , vol. II, pp. 310 ff., 550 ff.

420

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

North were committed to the defense of slavery. The respon¬
sibility for its continuance lay as much upon them as upon the
actual slave-owners, and if the Union continued, not only could
that responsibility not be avoided but the influence of slavery
would be forced more and more by the South on the Northern
states. Believing this issue paramount to all others, Garrison
finally came out in fiery denunciation of both the Union and
the Constitution.

In January 1843 he secured the passage of a resolution at
the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Antislavery Society,
to the effect “that the compact which exists between the North
and the South is ‘a covenant with death and an agreement
with helE — involving both parties in atrocious criminality,
and should be immediately annulled.” 1 At the meeting of the
New England Antislavery Society in the following June it was
resolved that it was the first duty of every Abolitionist to agi¬
tate for the immediate dissolution of the Union, and that they
could not consistently support the Constitution, even to the
extent of voting for any candidate for Federal office. Garri¬
son, Quincy, and Phillips supported the resolution, which was
passed by 250 to 24. 2 From about 1845 to the passage of the
Fugitive Slave Law in 1850, which marks the end of our period,
the Antislavery agitators adopted a new policy and abjured
political parties, churches, and other organizations, and in¬
dulged in a violent propaganda, mainly through the press and
meetings of their own bodies. This new phase was due to the
annexation of Texas and the Mexican War.

We need not go into the details of that long and tangled story
in so far as they belong to national politics.3 Texas had been
a matter for debate for nearly a decade before it became the
leading issue in the presidential campaign of 1844. The
project had been justly regarded as an effort of the South to
extend slavery through a territory as large as France and Eng¬
land combined, a suspicion which was considered amply con¬
firmed at the time by the letter written by Calhoun in answer

1 Garrison, Garrison , vol. Ill, p. 88.

2 The Liberator , June 14, 1844.

3 Justin H. Smith covers the ground in his Annexation of Texasy (New York, 191 1).

THE BLACK CLOUD

421

to the expressed desire of England to abolish slavery through¬
out the world. (The New England Antislavery elements were
naturally bitterly opposed to the Texas project, and the oppo¬
sition was loudly voiced in the legislatures of several of the
states. That of Maine resolved that the annexation would
increase slavery ; that the government had no constitutional
power to annex foreign territory ; and that the plan, if persisted
in, would “tend to drive the states into a dissolution of the
Union.” 1 Massachusetts went further, declaring that she
would never consent to the admission of Texas or any other
territory except on the basis of a free state, and, after the annex¬
ation, voted that the act was not legally binding on the states.2

Although the threats of nullification and of secession were
not carried out, and the fact of annexation was finally granted
as settling the question, the slavery issue had been pushed to
the fore in New England to an extent it never had before.
Multitudes who had been willing to leave it alone so long as it
seemed to concern only the old South, now realized that slavery
was not merely an ancient institution, not to be interfered with
under its constitutional guaranties, but was a growing menace
to the free states.

The feeling which had been liberated by the Texas question
was intensified by the war with Mexico that followed. Such
papers as The Liberator and the Herald of Freedom were natu¬
rally filled with scathing denunciations of what they regarded
as an utterly unjust and uncalled for conflict. Nor did the
legislature of Massachusetts stand alone in its constant suc¬
cession of resolves demanding that Congress put an end to the
struggle. “In the name of Jesus Christ,” reads one of these
numerous resolves, “in the name of the people of Massachu¬
setts who are unwilling that innocent blood should defile their
garments, we protest against the further perpetration of a great
national crime.” 3

1 Maine Legis. Doct. No. 46 , 1844, P* I3*

2 An Appeal to the People of Massachusetts, Boston, 1844; Mass. House of Repres.
Doct. No. 12 , 1845. Cf. Journal of Vermont Senate , Oct. Sess. 1844, PP- I23 /•> Journal
Vermont House of Repres., Oct. Sess. 1845; Journal Connecticut House of Repres., 1845,
pp. 223 ff. Mass. Senate Doct. No. 2y, 1844, p. 17; ibid., No. 104, 1845,

3 Ibid., No. 16, 1848, p. 7.

422

NEW ENGLAND IN THE REPUBLIC

The slavery question had ceased to be one that must be
hushed up. In the ten years that had passed since Governor
Everett had called upon the people of Massachusetts to avoid
discussion of it as a patriotic duty, it had been forced into the
open. From 1850 onward, not only that question but the en¬
tire national life entered upon a new phase. The struggle
which was to settle once for all the questions of slavery and
Union was still a decade off, but the old era closed with the
mid-year of the century; and the new one lies beyond the
limits of this work. The years from 1850 onward belong with
those which follow rather than with those which precede.

In the three volumes which form this series, we have now
traced the story of New England, often only in brief outline,
from the first explorations along its coast to the period which
marked the final accomplishment of its most distinctive work
in the life of the American nation. We saw in the first volume
how the geographical nature of the section tended, under the
conditions of the early days, to foster that isolation which had
been desired by the earliest settlers. Throughout the whole
colonial period, that isolation had been maintained until pres¬
sure of the common cause against England brought all thirteen
colonies into partial unity of thought and action and a some¬
what loose political bond. It was still many decades, however,
before a genuine national sentiment could develop; and in the
War of 1812 the old geographical influences were still at work
to keep New England an isolated section. The lack of ade¬
quate land transportation, the poverty of soil, and the absence,
as yet, of manufactures, made her commerce still her most
important factor. The interests of that commerce were diverse
from those of the rest of the nation, and the political leaders of
New England were led to the brink of secession.

Following that struggle, we have seen how quickly new con¬
ditions came to alter the old. Foreign commerce was to a
great extent replaced by domestic manufactures. Canals and
railroads were the equivalents of a changed geographic envi¬
ronment. Distances and mountains, which had been effective
barriers, were such no longer. In the change from commerce

THE BLACK CLOUD

4 *3

to manufactures the leaders of New England, who had hitherto
looked only overseas, now looked to the South for their raw
materials and to the West for markets for their finished prod¬
ucts. Imperceptibly, but rapidly, New England became linked
with the other sections. Geographic factors were still of influ¬
ence, it is true, and the section has always maintained a certain
aloofness from national interests and the national life, but from
the middle of the nineteenth century onward its history becomes
rather that of a mere section than of a distinct unit in the
nation.

Both the national nature of the great contest upon which the
country was entering and which was to absorb all its energies,
and the growth and subsequent development of the great West,
tended to diminish the extreme sectionalism as well as the com¬
parative importance of the New England states. In spite,
therefore, of the continuance even to-day of a New England
type, of a New England point of view, and of distinct New
England contributions to the national culture and outlook, we
may be justified in bringing our narrative to a close with New
England’s sectional contribution to the slavery struggle. We
thus end the story as we began, with the leaders of the New
England people wrestling with a transcendent moral problem,
willing to abandon the new political union with sister states as
they had, two centuries and a half before, abandoned their
homes and connections with the old mother state, when the
first few immigrants landed on the shores of Massachusetts
Bay.

The story has not been without its deep shadows. From the
days of JohnWinthrop to those of William Lloyd Garrison, the
leaders of New England, as well as its lesser characters, were
human beings with all the mixture of motives which character¬
izes men. Perhaps, at times, in a reaction against the old
point of view which regarded all Puritans and all Revolutionary
soldiers and agitators as saints and patriots, we may have been
tempted to stress the shadows rather than the lights. But it
is well that all sides of the story be told, for our forbears were
men like ourselves, and the work which they wrought can bear
the truth.

Ir

\

j

INDEX

Ir

V

INDEX

Abolitionists, in New England, 401-405,
408-417, 419, 420.

Adams, John, and revolutionary naval
forces, 1 5, 16 ; and choice of commander-
in-chief, 22 ; quoted against leniency to
Tories, 64; against the Cincinnati, 70;
drafts new constitution for Mass., 90;
quoted on difficulties of confederation,
109; and the peace treaty, 1 1 6 ; advo¬
cates establishment of a navy, 206 ;
quoted on New England aristocracy,
217, 218 ; averts war with France, 227.

Adams (Abigail), Mrs. John, quoted, on
enlistment and bounties, 18, 19; on
cost of household supplies, 41 ; on rise
of new men to leadership, 53 ; on cost
of farm labor, 58; on comparative
simplicity of dress in London, 59.

Adams, John Quincy, quoted on impress¬
ment of seamen, 246 ; on tendencies to
disunion, 257, 259, 260; on New Eng¬
land’s attitude during War of 1812, 300,
301; on Edward Everett, 415; pre¬
sents petitions in Congress against
slavery, 416.

Adams, Samuel, on probable length of the
war, 5 ; on necessity of propaganda, 61 ;
against the Cincinnati, 70; approves
independence of Vermont, 96; takes
conservative side during Shays ’s re¬
bellion, 153, 154, 162, 163; opposes
Federal Constitution, 171.

Agricultural conditions and problems.
See Farmers.

Alcott, Bronson, 358, 362, 363 n.

Algerine pirates, 206.

Alien and Sedition Laws, 224.

Allen, Ethan, as an author, 75; opposes
New York claim to Vermont, 94, 95,
100; involved in intrigue with British,
102-108, 1 8 1.

Allen, Ira, 101, 104, 106-108.

Allen, Levi, 101, 181, 182.

Ames, Fisher, as spokesman of conserva¬
tives in Mass., 147; his personal
record, 148, 149; quoted on commercial
basis of the Constitution, 174; quoted
on feeling toward England and France,
21 1 ; Federalist leader, 212; his
opinion of democracy, 213; on the

Democratic Clubs, 215, 216; on danger
of Democratic influence in politics, 229.

Anti-Catholic demonstrations, 334, 335,
336) 337-

Anti-Federalists’ grounds for objection,
171, 172, 175; broadening of their
ground, 220.

Antislavery movement, 360, 401-422.

Appleton, Nathan, 306, 309.

Aristocracy in New England, 217, 218;
protest against, 223 ; leadership of, 301 ;
revolt against control by, 328, 329;
workingmen vs., 347; and Unitarian-
ism, 355, 356.

Army officers, inadequate pay of, 68-70;
press attacks on, 69, 70.

Arnold, Benedict, 13, 14.

Austin, James T., 416.

Authors, New England, 352, 353.

Backus, Isaac, 76, 91.

Ballou, Rev. Adin, 360, 361.

Bancroft, George, 352, 362.

Banks, incorporation of, 202, 203 ; said
to be under Federalist control, 232;
and politics, 317; Jackson and, 348-
35?.

Baptists, 76, 91, 220, 221.

Beecher, Catherine, on country schools,

364-

Beecher, Lyman, on connection of
churches with politics, 318, 319; on
toleration measures, 321 ; attitude
toward Catholics, 335; the Unitarian
movement, 354; the temperance move¬
ment, 373.

Bennington, Vt., 10, 95.

Bentley, Rev. William, quoted, 78, 216.

Berlin Decree, 241, 247.

Beverly, Mass., privateers sent out from,
16, 54; decline of fisheries, 32, 37; for¬
tunes made in Eastern trade, 202;
changes after war, 304.

Bigelow, Timothy, 296.

Bishop, Abraharn, on relations of Church
and State, 223 ; against Federalists,
224.

Blind, training the, 371.

Blockade of American ports, 272.

Bond, George, 416.

428

INDEX

Bonus, soldiers’, 68, 69, 70, 71.

Book of Knaves ( First , Second , Fourth ),
279. >

Books in late eighteenth century, 71.

Boston, as a commercial centre, 4, 5 ; pro¬
test of women against high prices, 37;
scarcity of food, 38 ; profiteering, 46,
47; privateers, 50, 52; rise of new men
in politics, 53 ; extravagance, 59 ; con¬
fiscation of Loyalist property, 66 ; and
the constitutional convention, 90; and
reviving British trade, 119, 120, 122;
meeting in Faneuil Hall to consider
grievances, 1 53 ; domestic architec¬
ture, 202 ; town meeting condemns
Jay’s treaty, 216; Chamber of Com¬
merce approves treaty, 217; memorial
against British aggressions, 241 ; town
meeting on the Leopard-Chesapeake
affair, 243; John Henry’s report of
conditions in, 258, 259; protests

against Embargo and Enforcement
Act, 259, 261, 262; newspaper de¬
nounces the South, 273, 274; a Wash¬
ington’s Birthday celebration, 278, 279;
privateering, 280; smuggling, 282;
newspapers threaten secession, 292,
293; concentration of trade in, 304;
anti-tariff agitation, 31 1; becomes a
city, 316; anti-Catholic excitement,
334, 335, 336; makes connection with
the new West, 340; strikes of car¬
penters, 342-345 ; Trades Union
formed, 346; a literary centre, 351,
352; Unitarian movement. 353-356;
Transcendentalism, 356-360; work
for the blind, 371 ; work for the insane,
372; immigration problems, 388; hous¬
ing of the poor, 393, 394; fear of dis¬
cussions of slavery, 401 ; Garrison and
The Liberator , 403 ; the American Colo¬
nization Society, 409, 410; N. E. Anti¬
slavery Society, 410; churches and
slavery, 41 1, 412; mass meetings, 413,
414, 415, 416, 417; the Latimer case,
417, See Massachusetts.

Boston Gazette , quoted on lowering of
prices, 39; on rapacity of merchants,
39, 40; on adventures of privateers, 50.

Boundary War, 377, 378, 379.

Bounties offered for military enlistment,
18, 19, 20.

Bowdoin, James, quoted on changed per¬
sonnel of Mass, leaders, 53 ; in Mass,
politics, 123.

Bradford, Gamaliel, 415.

Bradford, John, quoted, on the draft, 18;
on insurance against privateers, 48, 49 ;
on cost of vessels, 50; on wages and
currency depreciation, 58.

Brandywine, 10.

Brisbane, Albert, 362.

Brook Farm, 358, 359-362.

Brougham, Henry Peter, Lord, on infant
industries in U. S., 308.

Brownson, Orestes, 358, 362.

Burgoyne, General, 10, 11.

Burr, Aaron, quoted on Conn, conserva¬
tism, 228 ; proposed as head of separate
Northern Union, 237.

Cabot, George, 296.

Calhoun, John C., 266, 404, 420, 421.

Canning, George, on impressment of
British seamen, 245.

Capitalists, rise of, 200, 202; diversion
from trade into manufactures, 306, 307 ;
and politics, 316, 317. See also Banks
and Corporations.

Carleton, Sir Guy, and his American
prisoners, 62.

Catholic Church, growing strength of,
334; attacks on and defense of, 235;
destruction of convent at Charlestown,
335, 336. r

Caucus, as basis of political machinery,
232.

Censorship of press in Conn., 63 ; of
speech in Mass., 64; not attempted in
1812, 271, 272.

Chalmers, George, on West Indies trade,
”7-.

Channing, William Ellery, 354, 356, 41 1,
416.

Charleston, S. C., Clinton’s attack on, 9.

Chastellux, Marquis de, quoted on uni¬
versality of war experience, 18; on
profits from privateering, 51.

Chesapeake attacked by Leopard,
^43*

Child, Lydia Maria, 362, 410.

Child labor in textile mills, 198, 313, 342,
396, 397-

Chittenden, Governor, and the plot with
Great Britain, 102, 103, 105, 106, ic8;
and Federal authority, 275, 286.

Church and State, relations of, 91, 220,
221, 222, 223. See Congregational
Church.

Churches, difficulties of the colonial, 74,
75, 76, 77. See Catholic Church, and
Congregational Church.

Cincinnati, Order of the, 70, 71.

Clarke, James Freeman, 358.

Clay, Henry, 266.

Clinton, Sir Henry, 9, 12, 15, 101.

Clothing supplies for Continental army,
25, 26, 47.

Cocheco Manufacturing Co., 345, 346.

Collins, John, 125.

Colonization of Negroes, movement for,
409, 410.

INDEX

4*9

Columbian Centinel on North vs. South,
273,274-

Committees of Correspondence limit
meeting of Tories, 63 ; new com¬
mittees formed, 145.

Committees of Safety disarm Tories, 63 ;
continued in N. H., 85; continued in
Mass., 85; in Vermont, 95.

Community experiments, 360, 361, 362.

Concord, Mass., convention to fix prices,
40.

Confederation, Articles of, progress in
shaping, hi, 112.

Congregational Church, 75; strength in
Connecticut, 82; made State church
in Mass., 91 ; clergy allied with aristo¬
cratic elements, 217; political strength
of, 220, 221 ; disestablished in Conn.,
321, 322; changes in, 353, 354; rise of
Unitarianism, 354, 356; developments
from Unitarianism, 356-360.

Congress, temporary seat of, 10; votes to
raise troops, 17, 18 ; recommends states
to take action on prices, 40; limits issue
of paper money, 40; fixes value of
paper money, 40 ; votes soldiers’ bonus,
68; not itself a bond of union, 80;
fear of enlarging its powers, 124;
urges states to pay share of expenses,
125; calls for troops to oppose Shays’s
Rebellion, 160; inadequacy of body
under new conditions, 167; some early
Acts of, 210; Act conciliating N. E.
states, 299; Tariff Act (1816), 309;
(1824), 31 1 ; (1828), 348; petitions

against slavery presented to, 416; Fu¬
gitive Slave Law, 420.

Connecticut, British raids in, 13; naval
forces of, 16; supplies clothing for
soldiers, 26; passes Act to regulate
prices, 38, 39 ; issues paper money, 42;
establishes censorship of press and
speech, 63 ; excitement against the
Cincinnati, 70, 71; church difficulties,
75; reshaping State government, 81;
power held by Council and Assembly,
82; method of voting, 82, 84; dispute
with Pennsylvania over land claims,
110-113; post-war taxes, 130; atti¬
tude toward Federal Constitution, 168,
169, 170; manufactures of hats, 192,
of buttons, 196, 197; aristocracy in,
217, 218; protest against conservatism
in, 223, 224; radicalism among Demo¬
crats, 233 ; the “ Stand-up Law,” 233 ;
agitation for a constitution, 234, 235 ;
protests against Embargo and Enforce¬
ment Act, 262, 263 ; textile manu¬
factures, 306-309 ; protects cotton and
woolen industries, 309; legislation
regarding factory children, 313 ; citizens

who moved west, 315; banks and poli¬
tics, 317; insurance companies, 317,
318; religion and politics, 318, 319,
320; new constitution, 320, 321; dis¬
franchisement of Negroes, 321 ; coun¬
try school conditions, 364, 365, 367;
begins teaching of deaf-mutes, 371, 372 ;
temperance movement, 373 ; profits of
corporations, 390; Negro question,
405-408.

Connecticut Couranty quoted on soldiers’
pay, 28 ; on depreciation of currency,
35; on regulation of prices, 36; on
complaints about taxation, 45 ; on
farm products and prices, 55, 56; on
farmers in politics, 57 ; on extrava¬
gance of the newly rich, 59; against
lenient feeling for British, 62; against
Tories, 64; against Jacobin ideas, 223;
predicts separation of North and South,
225; on Democratic activities, 228,
231 ; on slave representation, 238.

Connecticut Journal , quoted on soldiers’
pay, 26, 27 ; on inequitable taxation,

44. _

Constitution, Federal, delegates from
N. E. helping to shape, 167, 168;
economic factors in its adoption, 169;
opposition to, in Mass., 171, 172;
Mass, convention to consider, 174-177;
turning-point of its destiny, 177, 178;
attitude of R. I., 178, 179; real issue
in Mass., 21 1, 212; talk of amend¬
ment, 237, 262, 291, 292, 295, 296;
the Hartford Convention, 288-298;
local moves to abandon Constitution,
299-

Convent, Ursuline, destruction of, 335,
336.

Conway, General, on military strength
of the colonies, 6.

Cornwallis, Lord, General, 14, 15.

Corporations, formation of, 306, 307 ; in¬
jured by British competition, 308, 309;
tariff legislation, 309, 31 1, 312; the
Dartmouth College decision, 318;
attacks on railway corporations, 389,
390; profits in manufactures, 390, 391.
See Banks and Insurance companies.

Cotton, and the slavery problem,
404.

Cotton, Rev. John, quoted on democracy,
141.

Cotton market, and business in New Eng¬
land, 308, 310.

Craigie, Andrew, 46.

Crandall, Prudence, and the Negro ques¬
tion in Conn., 407, 408.

Currency, depreciation of, 34, 35, 36, 37,
40, 41, 55, 58. See Banks.

Curtis, George William, 362.

430

INDEX

Cushing, Abel, on democracy’s aims and
ideals, 341.

Cutler, Manasseh, 194.

Dana, Charles A., 358.

Dane, Nathan, 296.

Dartmouth College, corporation case
handled by Daniel Webster, 318 ; Pres¬
ident Lord defends slaveholding, 41 1.

Deaf-mutes, work for, 371, 372.

Debt, imprisonment for, 144, 368, 369,
370.

Deism, influence of, 75 ; disabilities of,
in Conn., 320.

Delaware River, 10, 12.

Democratic Clubs, 214, 215, 226, 231.

Democratic Party, Irish join, 225, 226;
bitter feeling against, 230, 231; ac¬
cuses Federalists of evil methods, 232;
battle cry of, 233 ; labor in, 347 ; atti¬
tude toward tariff, 347, 348 ; Irish
strengthen, 389; attacks corporations,
389, 390.

Democratic spirit in society, 141 ; growth
of, 220; urged by Bishop, 223; in
school management, 367 ; in society,
367, 368 ; in politics, 379, 380.

Derby, Elias Haskett, 200, 202.

Dexter, Samuel, 2 66.

Distilleries, 77.

Dix, Dorothea, 360; work for the insane,

372- .

Dorr, Thomas W., and extension of suf¬
frage in R. I., 382-386, 387.

Dow, Neal, 374.

Drafting men for the Continental army,
19, 20; for War of 1812, 286, 287.

Dwight, Theodore, on danger of Jacobin
ideas and practices, 222, 231 ; at the
Hartford Convention, 297; moves to
Albany, 315.

Economic effects of Revolutionary War,
31-59, 136, 137; economic structure
of New England near close of century,
183-203; changes after War of 1812,
312, 313, 314.

Education, public, after Revolution, 71,
72, 73, 74; in early nineteenth century,
363-367 ; Horace Mann, 367.

Elections and suffrage, early customs in
Conn., 82, 84; foreign vote, 225, 226,
227; the caucus, 232; in R. I.. 338,
380, 381 ; the Negro vote, 387 ; tear of
Catholics, 389; coercion of voters, 398.
See Property qualification.

Ellery, William, on depreciation of cur¬
rency, 35.

Ellsworth, Oliver, on immigration prob¬
lems, 225.

Ely, Samuel, 13 1, 132.

Embargo, the, 248, 249; extension of its
first provisions, 249, 250; effects of,
250-254, 255-263; repeal of, 264;
Act of 1813, 283 ; repeal of, 290.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 352, 359, 362.

Emigration from New England, 135, 191,
193, 314, 3i5, 316, 32 8, 332, 399.

Enforcement Act, Embargo, 259, 261,
262 ; repeal of, 264.

England, political ideas of, incompatible
with those of colonies, 4; blunders in
her policy, 8, 9, 14; overreliance on
Tory opinion, 8 ; overestimate of
Loyalist strength in colonies, 8, 9, 10;
blow of Burgoyne’s defeat, 10; Euro¬
pean enemies enter the struggle, 11, 12;
compensates Loyalist refugees in Can¬
ada, 66, 67 ; war with France, 205-
21 1 ; business with America, 209;
seizes American ships, 241 ; promul¬
gates the “Orders in Council,” 242;
new war with, 243 ; blockades Euro¬
pean ports, 247; attitude toward
America, 268; defeat in Battle of New
Orleans, 299; makes treaty of peace
with U. S., 299; excessive exports to
U. S., 308, 309 ; ships paupers to U. S.,
333, 334 ; dispute over Maine boundary,
377, 3 78, 379; abolishes slavery, 402.

Episcopal churches, difficulties of, 74, 75 ;
in Conn, politics, 319.

Erie Canal, 303, 315, 339, 340.

“Essex Junto,” 88, 89, 90, 212, 243, 260,
265, 269, 270, 292, 295.

Estaing, Charles Hector, Comte d’, 12.

European affairs as affecting America, 7,
11, 12, 204, 205, 206, 207, 209, 210, 21 1,
241, 247> 302, 303, 307, 376.

Everett, Edward, 352; deplores discus¬
sion of slavery, 400 ; 41 5.

Exeter, N. H., convention at, forms first
state constitution after war, 84, 85.

Factory industries, 312. See Manu¬
factures.

Faneuil Hall, meeting to protest against
anti-Catholic rioting, 335, 336; meet¬
ings during antislavery agitation, 413,
4!7-

Farmers, effect of war on, 54, 55; ac¬
cused of profiteering, 56, 57; become
influential in politics, 57; confined to
primitive tools and methods, 189, 190;
disadvantages of their life, 190; effect
of Embargo on, 252; organization in
agricultural societies, 305, 306 ; the
governing class in R. I., 380, 381.

Federal Constitution, 167-182; opposi¬
tion to it, 21 1, 212, 299 ; talk of amend¬
ment, 237, 262, 291, 292, 295, 296; the
Hartford Convention, 288-298.

INDEX

431

Federalism, Henry Adams quoted on,
230; keynote of, 233.

Federalist Party, origin and ideals of,
208, 209; increasing strength of, 219,
220; opposition to, 224; greatest
popularity, 227 ; strength in Mass.,
228 ; loses to Democrats in presidential
election, 230; apprehensions as to
Democratic influence, 231 ; the “Stand-
up Law,” 233; oppose written ballots;
234; changing fortunes of, 236; at¬
titude toward the Louisiana Purchase,
236; defeated in 1804 election, 239;
attitude toward war (1812), 247, 248;
attitude toward the Embargo, 249;
activity during Embargo, 255-257,
259, 260, 262, 263 ; loss of power,
264; attitude toward disunion, 264,
265, 266 ; the Crillon papers, 269 ;
opposition to war, 269, 270; and the
war loans, 275; advocacy of separate
peace, 276; change in party principles
and ideals, 276, 288; opposition to,
289; decline after the war, 304; and
the “Middling Interest,” 316.

Fenwick, Bishop, 335, 336.

Fisheries, decline of, during war, 32, 46 ;
condition of, after war, 54, 116, 1 17 ;
revival of, 201.

Follen, Charles T., 357, 410.

Food supplies during war, 24, 25, 32-41 ;
money made on, 46.

Forty-niners from New England, 399.

France, reasons for her aiding colonies, 7,
8; treaty of alliance, 12 ; war of Eng¬
land with, 205, 206, 207; American
feeling toward, 210, 21 1 ; echoes of the
French Revolution, 214, 215, 219;
dread of French influence, 222, 223,
231 ; Adams averts war with, 227.

Franklin, Benjamin, 97.

Freehold privileges in^R. L, 380, 381.

Freethinking in religion, 75, 76; during
French Revolution, 219, 220; fear of,
222, 231.

Free-trade doctrines, 115. «SV^' Tariff".

French Revolution, influence of, 214, 215,
219, 222, 223, 231.

Fugitive Slave Law, 420.

Fuller, Margaret, 358, 362.

Gallaudet, Thomas H., 371, 372.

Garrison, William Lloyd, in many re¬
forms, 374, 376; founds The Liberator ,
403; editorial in first issue, 403; op¬
poses American Colonization Society,
409, 410; violence against him, 415;
later extravagance and declining in¬
fluence, 419, 420.

German States, paupers and criminals
from, 333, 334.

Gerry, Elbridge, quoted against British
imports, 122; delegate to commercial
convention, 123, 124; opposes Federal
Constitution, 171, 172.

Goddard, Calvin, 296.

Godwin, Parke, 362.

Gold in California, 350, 399.

Goodrich, Chauncey, 296.

Gough, John B., 374.

Governments, Revolutionary, 80-108.

Grasse, Comte de. Admiral, 14.

Graydon, Alexander, on lack of military
leaders in New England, 23.

Greeley, Horace, 362.

“Green Mountain Boys,” 94.

Greene, Governor, on food supplies in
Rhode Island, 34.

Grimke, Angelina and Sarah, 360, 418.

Griswold, Roger, on separation of North
and South, 237.

Grundy, Felix P., 266, 268.

Haldimand, General, and the Vermont
plot, 102-108.

Hamilton, Alexander, quoted on people’s
right to self-defense, 148; quoted on
surplus and markets, 195; disapproves
move to separate North and South,
237; death of, 239.

Hampshire Grants, the, 11. See New
Hampshire Grants, and Vermont.

Hancock, John, and military leadership,
22; in Mass, politics, 123, 164, 165,
I7L 174, 176, 177.

Hardy, Sir Thomas, 285.

Hartford Convention, events leading to,
268, 287, 288 ; preparation for, 290-
296 ; sessions and Report of, 296, 297,
298, 299.

Harvard College, development of, 74;
and Unitarianism, 354, 355.

Harvey, General, on difficulty of conquer¬
ing the colonies, 6, 7.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 358.

Henry, John, on conditions in New Eng¬
land in 1800, 258, 259; return with the
Count de Crillon, 269.

Henry, Patrick, quoted on a united
America, 109.

Herald of Freedom, The , 421.

Hessians, stories of outrage by, 61, 62.

Higginson, Stephen, quoted on New Eng¬
land thrift, 186.

Hillhouse, James, 296, 317.

Hoar, Samuel, in S. C., 417, 418.

Holland, Park, quoted on Shays and his
men, 149, 150.

Holly, Isaac, 76.

Hopkins, Esek, 15.

Hospital service during Revolutionary
War, 26, 27.

43 ^

INDEX

Housing conditions (1849), 393, 394, 395-

Howe, William, Lord, 5, 9, 12.

Howell, David, quoted on right to trade,
1 15; opposes taxation to pay national
debt, 127.

Hubbard, Henry, in Louisiana, 418.

Humanitarian movements, 357-376.

Huntington, Ebenezer, quoted on soldiers’
lack of pay, 28, 29.

Hutchinson, Thomas, Governor, sale of
confiscated property of, 66.

Idealism in literature, 352, 353; in
living, 359-362, 363, and n.

Immigration, and foreign vote, 225;
statistics of, 332 ; naturalization frauds,
333 » paupers and convicts sent over
by foreign governments, 333, . 334;
problems of poor relief, 334; Irish in
New England, 387, 388, 389 ; effect on
labor in mills, 397, 398, 399.

Impressment of seamen, 205, 240, 244-
247, 2 66, 270, 271.

Indian question in politics, 2 66.

Indians, purchase of New York land from,

194*

Industrial Revolution, the, 340, 346, 399.
See Labor.

Insane, treatment of, 372.

Insurance companies, rise of, 317, 318.

Intemperance, efforts against, 372, 373,
374-

International relationships, 204-21 1 ; 241,
247 ; become less absorbing, 302, 303,
327; Essay on a Congress of Nations ,
376; beginning of world movement,
376.

Irish, immigration of, 225 ; refugees feared
as revolutionary, 226; form secret
society, 226 ; as laborers, 227 ; in¬
creasing number in famine years, 332,
333, 387, 388 ; prejudices against, 388,
389; replace native-born workers in
mills, 398, 399.

Jackson, Andrew, President, and the
banks, 348-350.

Jackson, Francis, 410.

Jacobin Clubs and their American imita¬
tion, 214; fear of their influence, 215,
219, 222, 229, 231.

Jails, 368, 369, 370. .

Jamaica, pauper emigrants from, 334.

Jay, John, mission to England, 206, 216.

Jefferson, Thomas, feared by conserva¬
tives, 222, 230, 231; purchase of
Louisiana unpopular, 235, 236; his re-
election, 239; policy in avoiding war,
243, 249, 250, 254; charged with
French entanglement, 256; change of
base, 263, 264.

King, Rufus, on effect of price-fixing
legislation, 36; on excessive taxation,
143; on opinions at the Constitutional
Convention, 176; on Hancock’s pru¬
dence, 177; on immigration from
Ireland, 225 ; secures better legislation
for coasting vessels, 324.

Labor conditions after Revolutionary
War, 53, 54, 196; unsatisfactory after
War of 1812, 331, 332; emigration as
a remedy, 332; immigration creates
new problems, 333 ; effect of improved
transportation, 340; attitude toward
capital, 341 ; slow progress of organ¬
ization, 341 ; working hours, 341, 342;
demand for ten-hour day, 342, 343 ;
strike of carpenters, 342, 343, 344;
strike of ship-carpenters, 345 ; terms
exacted by employers, 345, 346 ; panic
and unemployment, 349, 350; wages,
in mills, 391; hours of labor, 392;
blacklisting, 393; housing, 394, 395,
396; foreign workers accept small
wages, 397, 399. See also Child

Labor.

Labor organizations, 344; employers’
attitude toward, 345, 346; first Trades
Union, 346, 347 ; decline of, 350; pro¬
test against Irish immigration, 389 ; at¬
tack big profits of corporations, 389,
390, 391; strikers, 391.

Ladd, William, and the Peace movement,
376, 377-

Lafayette, Marquis de, General, 12.

Land claims, western, 112, 113, 194, 31 4,
315-

Law school, first, 74.

Lead, shortage of, 31, 32.

Ledyard, William, Colonel, 13, 14.

Lee, Charles, on lack of New England
officers, 23.

Leland, John, Rev., 221.

Leopard attacks Chesapeake, 242.

Liberator , The , 403, 412, 421.

Lincoln, Benjamin, General, 159, 160-
. 163-

Liquor traffic, legislation on, 373, 374.

Literature, 351, 352, 353.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 352.

Lopez, David, Jr., on business conditions
in R. I. and Mass., 39.

Lovejoy, Elijah P., murder of, 416,
417.

Lowell, Francis C., 306, 309.

Lowell, John, 88, 269, 292.

Loyalists, number and weight of, 8, 9, 10;
intolerant treatment of, 63-68 ; and
the arts, 73.

Luxury, increase of, 59, 200, 202,

33i-

INDEX

433

Lyman, Daniel, 296.
Lyon, Matthew, 101, 216.

Madison, James, quoted on decision of
Conn, land claims, 113; on question of
Vermont’s independence, 1 13 ; becomes
President, 264; deceived by Napoleon,
265; and the Count de Crillon, 268,
269; efforts to finance the war, 285.

Maine votes on new constitution, 91 ;
agitates for separation from Mass., 180,
1 8 1 ; development of manufactures,
306; in the Union, 31 1, 323; reasons
for separation from Mass., 323-326;
temperance movement, 373 ; boundary
dispute, 377, 378, 379; opposes an¬
nexation of Texas, 421.

Manchester (Vt.) convention declares
independence of N. Y., 95.

Manners of young people after Revolu¬
tion, 77, 78. _ .

Manufactures, early enterprises in Mass.,
51, 52; hats in Conn., 192, 197; diffi¬
culty over materials, tools, and wages,
196; cotton- and wool- spinning, 197;
Slater’s enterprise in R. L, 197, 198;
mill operatives, 198; growth of in¬
dustries, 284; increase after the war,
304 ; woolen industry, 306, 307 ; cotton
mills, 306; collapse under heavy im¬
ports, 307-309; conditions in textile
mills, 312, 313; development of busi¬
ness creates new social and political
problems, 381 ; large earnings in, 390,
391 ; increased demands of labor, 391 ;
weak defense of the long day, 392;
effect of wide distribution of stock, 395 ;
employment of children, 396, 397;
cheap labor replaces native workers.

398, 399-

Marchant, Henry, on extravagance after
the war, 59.

Mason, Lowell, 371.

Massachusetts raises force against British
on Penobscot River, 13; naval forces
in the war, 16; privateers sent out
from, 16, 17; military enlistments in,
18; call for lead supplies, 31, 32; re¬
peals price-regulating laws, 38 ; passes
Act regarding amounts of goods pur¬
chasable, 40; issues bills of credit, 42;
poll taxes, 43 ; inequitable schemes of
taxation, 44; early manufacturing
enterprises, 51, 52; changes in legisla¬
tive personnel, 53 ; ruin of fisheries, 54 ;
legislates against freedom of speech,
64; provides for banishment of Tories,
64, 65 ; confiscates Tory property, 65,
66; school conditions, 73, 74; church
conditions, 74, 75; distilleries, 77;
new problems of government, 80;

work on shaping constitution, 85-90;
independent action of various towns,
86, 87; the Essex Junto, 88, 89, 90;
vote on new constitution, 91 ; estab¬
lishes State (Congregational) Church,
91; decline of shipbuilding, 119; de¬
cline of whaling, 119, 121; troubles
over enforced taxation, 131-134; aris¬
tocracy and the poor, 142; property
qualification for franchise, 142; suits
and imprisonment for debt, 144, 145;
unpopularity of State government,
145-147; Shays’s rebellion, 149-166;
discussion of Federal Constitution, 171,
172, 174-177; East India trade, 199;
trade with China, 200, 202 ; demonstra¬
tions in regard to Jay’s treaty, 216, 217;
controlling element in, 217; property
qualification for voters, 233 ; advocacy
of separating North and South, 236,
237; opposition to the scheme, 238;
protests against Embargo and Enforce¬
ment Act, 261, 262; British attack on
shipping, 242, 243 ; opposition to the
war, 243, 244 ; losses through Embargo,
250, 258, 259; the Crillon papers, 269;
opposition of Federalists to war, 269,
270; attitude toward war loans, 274;
smuggling in, 282, 283 ; declarations
regarding State’s rights, 299 ; increased
prosperity after War of 1812, 303, 304;
collapse of manufactures, 307-309 ;
revised constitution, 322, 323 ; separa¬
tion of Maine, 323-326; anti-Catholic
demonstrations, 334-337 ; labor con¬
ditions, 341-347; hard times for the
manufacturers, 349; literary awaken¬
ing, 3 5 1 — 3 5 3 5 religious changes, 353,
354-356; school conditions, early
nineteenth century, 364-366, 367;

Horace Mann, 367; prisons and jails,
368-371 ; reforms in treatment of in¬
sane, 372; organized effort to check
intemperance, 373, 374; profits of
corporations, 390, 391 ; the Lowell
mills, 391, 392, 394, 395, 397; cheap
immigrant labor, 397, 398, 399; coer¬
cion of voting employees, 398 ; opposi¬
tion to annexation of Texas, 421. See
also Essex Junto.

Massachusetts Centinel , quoted against
imports from England, 121, 122.

Massachusetts Gazette , on excessive taxa¬
tion, 133, 134.

May, Samuel J., 408, 410.

Metal manufactures, beginning of, 51, 52.

Milan Decree, 247.

Militia regiments, 17; and Federal serv¬
ice, 275, 276, 286.

Missouri, admission of, 325, 326.

Missouri Compromise, the, 326.

434

INDEX

Money, Continental, depreciation of, 40;
paper money in R. I., 42, .43, 127, 128,
129; in N. H., a small-town vote for,
140 n. See also Panic.

Montgomery Guards, the, 337.

Moral effects of the war, 60-79.

Morley, John, quoted, 353.

Morris, Gouverneur, advocates a naval
force, 206.

Morristown, N. J., 10.

Morse, Jedediah, geography of, 74.

Music, interest in, 72, 73.

Napoleon issues Berlin Decree, 241, 247;
Milan Decree, 247 ; deceives Madison,
265.

Navigation Acts, 117.

Navy, Continental, creation of, 15, 16;
U. S. navy organized, 207.

Negroes, disfranchisement of, in Conn.,
321 ; in R. I., 321 ; school problems in
Conn., 405, 406-408; American Colo¬
nization Society, 409, 410. See also
Slavery.

Neutral commerce, problems of, 240, 241.

New Connecticut, 96.

New England, geographic isolation of, 4,
5, 109; British plan to cut off, 6, 10;
privateers equipped in, 15, 16; early
naval forces of, 16; military forces
raised in, 18; lack of experience in
leadership, 23 ; feeling between rich
and poor, 23 ; calls Providence con¬
vention on prices and costs, 35, 36;
calls Springfield convention on cur¬
rency, taxes, and prices, 37, 38 ; social
distinctions, 45 ; ruin of carrying trade,
54; effects of war on farming, 54, 55;
opposes half pay for retired army
officers, 69; books sold in, 71, 72;
small appreciation of the arts, 72;
school and church conditions, 73, 74,
75; troubles over excessive taxation,
130-134; emigration westward from,
135; economic problems of, 183-203;
decline in population, 184; post-office
business, 185; jealousy of other sec¬
tions, 185-186; new thrift and in¬
dustry, 186; the “township” as a
unit, 186; limitations of the rural com¬
munity, 187; markets for agricultural
surplus, 187, 188; emigration from
farms, 1 9 1 ; receives and sells land
ceded by N. Y., 194; East India trade,
199; trade with China, 200, 202; be¬
ginning of immigration problems, 225;
expansion of commerce and carrying
trade, 239, 240; protests against war
with England, 243, 244; losses through
Embargo, 250; protests against En¬
forcement Act, 261, 262; attitude

toward war loans, 270, 284, 285;
smuggling in, 282, 283; not unanimous
for separation, 300; increased pros¬
perity after close of war, 303, 304;
conservatism of farmers, 305 ; develop¬
ment of agricultural societies, 305, 306;
manufactures, 307-309 ; dependence
on cotton market, 310; westward emi¬
gration from, 314, 315; urban move¬
ment, 316; rise of capitalists, 316, 317 ;
increase of social inequalities, 329, 330,
331, dd2> connection with West, 340;
financial panic, 348, 349; labor condi¬
tions, 350; literary renaissance, 351—
353; religious changes, 353~d59J
school conditions in early nineteenth
century, 364-367; prison reform, 369,
d7°, 371; early Peace Societies and
leaders, 376 ; broadened franchise,
379; struggles in R. I., 382-386;
profits of corporations, 390, 391 ; labor
agitation, 391, 392; the ten-hour day,
d92> d9d> 39% ; housing conditions, 383,
d?4> d95 child labor, 396, 397; im-,
migrants in the mills, 399; the forty-
niners, 399; antislavery agitation un¬
popular, 401, 402; Garrison and The
Liberator, 403, 404; anti-Negro feeling
in North, 405-408 ; work of the
Abolitionists, 408, 409; American

Colonization Society, 409, 410; famous
antislavery leaders, 410; proslavery
men, 41 1 ; New England wrestling with
a great moral problem, 423.

New Hampshire, vessels in the war, 16;
uses paper money, 41, 42; banishes
Tories, 65 ; new problems of govern¬
ment, 80; new constitution, 84, 85;
a town-meeting vote for paper money,
140 n\ other problems of legal tender,
141 ; attitude toward Federal Con¬
stitution, 170; Portsmouth disap¬
proves Jay’s treaty, 216; favors the
Embargo, 263; Federalist attitude
toward war, 270, 271 ; loses the Dart¬
mouth College case, 318; separates
Church and State, 322; denounces
slavery, 326; labor conditions, 345,
346; country schools, 365; temper¬
ance movement, 373; profits of big
corporations, 390; labor in mills, 392,
d9d 5 protests against education of
Negroes, 406.

New Hampshire Grants, 93; disputes
over ownership, 94-108.

New Orleans, Battle of, 299.

New York (State), claims authority over
“New Hampshire Grants,” 94-108;
comes to agreement with Vermont,

1 81; immigration from N. E. into,
19 d, 194, 314; cedes land to Mass.,

INDEX

435

194; Erie Canal, 339, 340; country
schools in 1844, 364.

Newburyport, Mass., privateers from,
54 ; represented in the Essex Junto, 88 ;
rich ship-captains of, 202 ; decline after
the war, 304.

Non-Intercourse Act, 264, 265.

Nova Scotia, 9, 10, 47; Loyalist refugees
in, 67.

Nullification, threats of, in North, 264,
265 ; threats in South, 348.

Ohio, emigration to, 314, 315.

Ohio Company, the, 194, 195.

Onion River Land Co., 100.

Orders in Council, British, 247.

Otis, Harrison Gray, quoted on prices
received for soldiers’ clothing, 47 ; and
the Hartford Convention, 294, 296;
opposes Tariff" Act, 310; and the ten-
hour day movement, 343, 344; against
the Abolitionists, 413.

Owen, Robert, 360, 362.

Paine, Robert Treat, on inequitable
taxation, 44.

Paine, Thomas, advises confiscation of
Tories’ property, 65 ; his Age of Reason ,
219.

Palmerston, Lord, 334.

Panic of 1833-34, 34& ; of 1837, 349.

Parker, Rev. Theodore, 357, 358.

Parsons, Theophilus, 88, 177, 212.

Parties, political, 207, 208, 209. See
also Democratic, Federalist, Republi¬
can, Whig, Workingmen’s.

Peabody, Elizabeth and Sophia, 358, 362.

Peace Societies, 374, 375, 376.

Penn, Governor John, no.

Pennsylvania, dispute of Conn, with,
110-113; emigration from N. E. to,
314-

Pepper trade, 201.

Phillips, Wendell, and the antislavery
cause, 410; quoted, 411, 412, 416, 417.

Phillips Academies founded, 74.

Pickering, Timothy, quoted on soldiers’
pay, 28 ; on public attitude toward
Tories, 68; Federalist leader, 212;
his opinion of democracy, 213; on
separation of North and South, 236,
237 ; makes overtures to England,
255, 256, 257; on separation of East
and West, 270; on the Embargo of
1813, 283; on war loan, 284; fantastic
plan to force Western secession, 295.

Pinckney, Charles C., quoted, 201.

Pittsfield, Mass., memorializes General
Court, 86.

Plymouth, Mass., and war requisitions,
20, 21, 22.

Powder mills in Mass., 51.

Prescott, William Hickling, 352.

Prisons and jails, 368, 369, 370, 371.

Privateers, American, 15, 16, 17; profits
of, 49, 50, 51 ; later practice, 281.

Privateers, British, 17, 48, 49.

Prize money, 49, 51, 281.

Profiteering during the war, 46, 47; for¬
tunes made, 52.

Propaganda during the Revolution, 60,
61, 62; against Tories, 64-68.

Property qualification for the vote, 84,
88, 89, 92, 97, 142, 233, 323, 338.

Providence (R. I.), convention on costs
and prices, 35, 36; protests against
paper money, 127, 128; begins cotton¬
spinning, 197-198; varying fortunes of
the industry, 308, 309; inadequate
representation, 339 ; convention of
workingmen, 344; disfranchisement of
citizens, 381. See also Rhode Island.

Putnam, Israel, General, 194.

Quincy, Edmund, 410, 417, 420.

Quincy, Josiah, quoted on child labor in
cotton mills, 198; on right of states to
disunion, 265 ; his attitudes toward the
war, 268, 269, 272, 273, 275; and the
Washington Benevolent Societies, 278,
279-

Rampart Rocks, Battle of, hi.

Reason the Only Oracle of Man , 75.

Reeve, Tappan, Judge, 74.

Religion. See Church and State; Con¬
gregational Church; Deism; Free-
thinking; Unitarianism.

Religious liberty, movements for, 76, 77.

Republican Party, 208, 209, 212, 221,
228, 233, 234, 235, 236, 238, 243, 248,
264, 266.

Revolutionary War, economic effects of,
31-59; moral effects of, 60-79; state
governments after, 80-108.

Rhode Island, memorializes Congress for
a navy, 15; sloops in service, 16;
movement of population, 32, 33 ; issues
paper money, 42, 43; unjust taxation
in, 44; nail-making established, 52;
banishes Tories, 65 ; suppresses dis¬
tilleries, 77 ; reshaping of State govern¬
ment, 81; opposes taxation by Con¬
gress, 125; disagreements between
farming and mercantile classes, 126;
difficulties over paper money, 127, 128,
129; attitude toward Federal Consti¬
tution, 178, 179, 180; cotton manu¬
factures begun, 197, 198; losses

through Embargo, 250; protests
against Enforcement Act, 263 ; textile
manufactures, 307, 308, 309, 312, 313;

436

INDEX

suffrage qualifications, 338 ; demand
for a constitution, 339; labor organi¬
zation, 344 ; country schools, 365, 366 ;
temperance movement in, 373; out¬
grown regulations of franchise, 380,
381 ; lack of written constitution, 380,
381; unfair privileges of landowners,
381; Dorr’s Rebellion, 382-386;
adopts a constitution, 386, 387.

Rhode Island system of employment in
mills, 312, 313.

Ripley, Rev. George, on Unitarianism,
355, 356; on Transcendentalism, 357;
the Brook Farm community, 361, 362,

363.

Robinson, Colonel Beverly, and the Ver¬
mont plot, 102, 105.

Salem, Mass., privateers from, 54;
manners of youth in, 78 ; China trade,
200; East India trade, 201, 202; de¬
cline after the war, 304.

Saybrook Platform, the, 77.

Schools. See Education.

Scott, General Winfield, 379.

Secession threatened in New England,
236, 237; plotted during Embargo,
259, 260; urged by some newspapers,
273, 274, 287, 292, 293; fear of seces¬
sion of the South, 404; threats of,
by the South, 413.

Sectionalism, 108, 255-280; 403, 409,

4*3, 421*

Shaw, Samuel, Major, 199, 200.

Shays, Daniel, 149.

Shays’s Rebellion, background of, 24;
events of, 149-166.

Sheep-breeding, 306.

Sheffield, Lord, on trade with America,
1 16.

Sherman, Roger, on crops and taxes,
37; approves independence of Vt., 96;
in the Constitutional Convention, 168;
at the Hartford Convention, 296.

Sherwood, Captain Justice, and the Ver¬
mont plot, 103, 104, 106, 107.

Shipbuilding, decline of, 119; revival of,
201 ; losses through Embargo, 250.

Shipping, loss of, during Revolution, 54;
loss of, by British depredations, 241,
242; through the Embargo, 250.

Shoemaking in Mass., 51, 189, 349.

Slater, Samuel, 197, 198.

Slavery, clause in Constitution, de¬
nounced by Mass., 175 ; feeling against,
295; Missouri Compromise, 326; new
antislavery agitation, 326, 327; dis¬
cussion of, in North, 401, 402; William
Lloyd Garrison on, 403 ; economic
basis of, 404; racial antagonisms, 405-
408; defenders of, 411, 412, 413;

“underground railroad,” 412; Fugi¬
tive Slave Law, 420; annexation of
Texas, 420.

Smuggling, of goods from England, 47;
American goods into West Indies, 118,
1 19; during the Embargo, 253, 254;
during war (1812), 282, 28^.

Social distinctions in New England, 45,
217, 218, 223, 301, 32B-33L 347, 354,
355, 405, 406, 407.

Soldiers, neglect of, 20, 24-29, 47.

Spain, attitude of, 11, 12.

Specie payments, resumption of (1781),
129.

Speculation in goods and commodities,
36, 37, 52; in stocks and securities,
203 ; in real estate, 348, 349.

Stark, John, 10, 108.

State’s rights, doctrine of, emphasized by
R. I., 126; advanced by Ky. and Va.,
224; discussed in N. E., 288, 299. See
also Secession.

Stephen, James, on War in Disguise ,
241.

Stockbroking, 202.

Story, W. W., 362.

Stowe, Harriet Beecher, quoted, 354.

Strikes, 341-345-

Strong, Rev. Joseph, quoted on young
people, 78.

Stuart, Professor Moses, and slavery, 411.

Suffrage. See Elections and Property
qualification.

Sullivan, John, General, 12.

Sumner, William Graham, quoted, 3.

Susquehanna Company and the Conn,
land claims, 110-113.

Switzerland, paupers and criminals from,
333, 334-

Tammany Societies, 276, 277.

Tariff legislation by States, 120; by Con¬
gress, to protect cotton industries,
309; further legislation opposed, 310,
3 1 1 ; opinion in N. E., 311, 312;
Abbott Lawrence on, 312; Demo¬
cratic Party and, 347, 348.

Taxation, faulty planning of, 28, 41, 42;
ignorant prejudice against, 41 ; by
towns, 43; poll taxes in Mass., 43;
post-war, 125, 130; troubles over en¬
forced, 130-134; without representa¬
tion, in R. I., 381.

Temperance Societies, 373.

Texas, annexation of, 420, 421.

Textile mills, conditions in, 198, 313, 390,
391, .392, 393; child labor, 396, 397;
immigrant labor, 397, 398, 399. See
also Manufactures.

Thoreau, Henry D., 358.

Ticknor, George, 352.

INDEX

437

Tocqueville, Alexis de, on political
struggles in America, 329, 330.

Toleration, movement toward religious,
3} 9, 320, 321, 322, 323, 353-359.

Tories. See Loyalists.

Town-meetings, independent action of,
86, 87.

Township, a political unit in N. E., 186;
system adopted in lands of Ohio Co.,
195-

Tracy, Nathaniel, 51.

Trade, intercolonial, 32, 35; war profits,
46, 47; with West Indies, 117; in
whale oil, 1 1 7 ; in British goods, 119,
120, 1 21 ; and paper money, 128; in
land, 137; new conditions of, 167;
trade considerations force R. I. into
the Union, 179, 180; State trade in
lands, 1 8 1 ; limited markets, 187, 188;
western lands, 194, 195; China and
East India, 199, 200, 201, 202; the
Embargo, 249-253; smuggling, 253,
254, 282; in N. E. manufactured
goods, 284; revival after war, 303;
whaling, 304; diversion of capital
into manufactures, 306, 307; effect
of increased imports, 307, 308 ; the
tariff question, 309, 310, 31 1; west¬
ward extension by Erie Canal, 339,
340; trade relations and the slavery
question, 404.

Transcendentalism, philosophy of, 356,
357; exponents of, 358, 359; at
Brook Farm, 360-362.

Transportation, improvements in, 331,
339, 340-

Travel, conditions of ocean, 330, 331.

Treaty of Versailles, 15.

Trenton, N. J., British occupation of, 9.

Trumbull, Jonathan, on price-fixing leg¬
islation, 39 ; on the arts, 73.

Uniforms in Continental army, 25.

Unitarianism, growth of, 354, 355, 356.

United States Bank and Jackson, 348,
349-

Urban conditions, trend toward, 339;
political bearing of, 347; peculiar dis¬
advantage in R. I., 381.

Valley Forge, ii, 24, 25, 47.

Van Buren, Martin, President, 349.

Vermont (“New Hampshire Grants”),
93-96 ; declares independence, 96 ;
adopts a constitution, 97, 98 ; pro¬
hibits slavery, 98 ; relations with New
Hampshire, 98 ; disputes over status,
and plots with British, 99-108; land
swindles in, 137; taxation and debt
legislation, 138, 139; a separate

sovereign state, 181 ; comes into Union

and ratifies Federal Constitution, 182;
difficulty about authority over militia,
275, 276; denounces slavery, 326, 327;
temperance movement in, 373.

Vernon, William, on extravagance after
the war, 59.

Virginia, growth in population of, 185.

Wait, Thomas B., on democracy, 172.

Waltham system of employment in mills,
312, 313-

War of 1812, grievances underlying, 240,
241, 242, 243, 244-248 ; the Embargo,
249-254; danger of disunion, 255-260;
effect of the Enforcement Act, 261-
263; Madison becomes President, 264;
Non-Intercourse Bill, 265; the “War
Hawks,” 266, 267, 268; protests

against declaration of war, 269, 270,
271; obstructionist policy, 274, 275;
traffic with the enemy, 282, 283 ; fail¬
ure of war loan, 284, 285; British take
Washington, 285; the draft, 286, 287;
the Hartford Convention, 290-294;
its sessions and Report, 297, 298 ;
Battle of New Orleans, 299; peace
treaty, 299.

“War Hawks,” 2 66.

War loans, raising, 270, 274, 275, 284, 285.

Washington, George, 5, 9, 10; quoted,
14; at Yorktown, 14, 15; difficulties
with militia troops, 17; appointment
as commander-in-chief, 22; quoted
on foreign volunteers, 24; quoted on
conditions at Valley Forge, 26; his
character as an inspiration, 29 ; quoted
on Conn, land claims, 113; quoted on
protests and rioting in Mass., 1 57 ;
denounces the Democratic Clubs, 215.

Washington Benevolent Societies, 276-
280; 283.

Weare, Meshech, 85.

Webster, Daniel, author of Federalist,
protest against the war, 270, 271; as
an anti-tariff speaker, 310, 31 1; the
Dartmouth College case, 318; nego¬
tiates treaty with England, 379.

Webster, Noah, spelling-book of, 74;
on property rights, 233, 234.

West Indies, desire of France for hold¬
ings in, 8; British plan attack on 12;
war continued in, 15; reports of pri¬
vateers in, 17; increased cost of goods
from, 34; fluctuating prices of goods,
47, 49; closed to American trade, 115,
1 17; smuggling goods into, 117, 118;
limitations of this market, 188; me¬
morialize Parliament for relief, 199;
trade with the French islands, 205 ;
revival of trade with New England,

239-

INDEX

■ 438

“Western Reserve of Connecticut,” 113,

3 1 5 •

Whaling industry, decline of, 119, 121 ;

New Bedford’s specialty, 304.

Whigs, attitude of, toward immigrants,

389*.

Whittier, John Greenleaf, 352, 410.
Winthrop, John, Governor, quoted on de¬
mocracy, 141.

Wolcott, Oliver, 319.

Woman’s Rights movement, 360, 418,
4J9-

Women’s protest against high prices, 37.
Workingmen’s Party, 346, 369.

Wyoming Massacre, the, ill.

Yale College, 74, 219, 221.

Yorktown, 14, 26.

Youth after the Revolutionary War, 77,

78.

•*>

±1 . ■ i*